


first comes the love story

by meradorm



Category: Mumintroll | Moomins Series - Tove Jansson
Genre: Light Bondage, M/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:14:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 26,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22175365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meradorm/pseuds/meradorm
Summary: The Joxter and the Muddler were in love, once.
Relationships: Joxaren | The Joxter/Rådd-djuret | The Muddler
Comments: 16
Kudos: 30





	1. 1

First comes the love story.

* * *

The Oshun Oxtra went ashore for repairs one day, or at least Hodgkins said it was repairs. He wasn't doing a lot of fixing up, however, and probably just wanted a day at the beach.

The Muddler hid under a beach umbrella (he burned easily) and watched everyone. Hodgkins was reading, and Moomin and the Joxter were amusing themselves in the water. 

"Muddler! Come here! I found something!" the Joxter called, waving his hands. The Muddler felt his heart began to beat a little quicker - he liked a really good piece of sea glass - and he hopped over to him.

The Joxter grabbed him in a headlock and plunged them both into the sea.

The Muddler remembered that for a long time. The sudden breathlessness, and how he opened his eyes, saw the rays of sunlight through the salt-sea burn. Everything blue. And the Joxter's arms around him. So close he was to his body.

"Joxter! No!" cried the Muddler, shooting up out of the water, coughing. The Joxter just kept laughing, hanging on to him.

"You looked so lonely by yourself on the shore! Don't tell me you're afraid of water - " He frowned, pulling his arms away. "Oh, I really upset you. I'm sorry," he said, although casually.

The Muddler had never heard the Joxter apologize for anything in his entire life, however little he meant it.

"Of course it upset me!"

"Come on, don't be like that," the Joxter coaxed. "Lay with me on the water. You'll like it." The Joxter, who took to water like a dolphin, simply lifted up his legs and floated on his back. He was staring directly into the sun. The Muddler wondered what he got out of it.

The Muddler kicked a bit, but he wasn't very good at staying on top. He hovered in the water anyway, feeling the current as it lapped against him, pulling him this way and that.

He almost thought he could feel the Joxter breathe.

"What are you thinking about?" the Muddler asked him.

"I'm not thinking about anything," said the Joxter.

They stayed together in silence for a while, until the Joxter decided that he wanted to look on the shore for something more interesting to do.

He didn't turn up before dinner, so Hodgkins recruited the Muddler to go look for him, seeing as how he was the most worried. (Actually, the other two weren't worried at all.)

"He can't be far," Hodgkins said, and made an irritated sound. "I just don't want to wait."

The Muddler wasn't keen on going into the jungle surrounding the shore by himself, but if the Joxter needed him, he decided, he had to be there. 

Still, he was careful to follow the long ridge of rocks that ran from the beach inland, so that he wouldn't get lost.

"Joxter?" he called. "Joxter!"

There was no reply, and soon he couldn't hear the sounds of Moomin and his uncle making conversation, nor the sound of the wind flapping the Oshun Oxtra's sails.

He kept one hand on the rocks as he walked, moving as quietly as he could in the underbrush.

And then the jungle opened. Before him was a small lagoon. The water was as blue as turquoise, and the light was shaded in the bowers of trees. And there was the Joxter, sleeping on the rocks, stretched out on his pile of clothes. He was naked, and the Muddler wasn't sure if he should wake him in this state, or if he should leave, or...look. Just look.

The Joxter yawned, and the Muddler started. He was about to start apologizing profusely, but the Joxter didn't seem to care in the slightest that he was naked before him.

"See what I found!" he said with a grin, eyes still shut.

"Uncle says you're to come back to the ship," says the Muddler.

"Swim with me first. Just the two of us. I have no intention whatsoever of going back until then." He got up from the rock and slipped into the water.

The Muddler inhaled. He couldn't see into this water as easily as he could in the sea. Still, he took one step in, and then two...

Something grabbed his leg.

"I _know_ this is you, Joxter!" he yelped, yanking it back. 

The Joxter exploded out of the water laughing, and then he looked at the Muddler with light in his eyes before he threw his arms around his neck and kissed him.

"You're so funny," he told him, still laughing, whispering into his mouth. 

_What just happened?_

Everything he dreamt for - everything - 

The Joxter pulled back, cupping the Muddler's face, looking at him with more affection than the Muddler ever thought possible.

"Do you want me to kiss you again?" he asked gently.

* * *

  
  


They made love there, on the slick rocks, the Muddler with his eyes on Joxter's face, his neck, his hands. He wanted to take him in, remember the way his body looked, just in case this never happened again.

The Joxter was a joyful lover. He kissed his neck, the soft place behind his ear, cradled his head to him, and every touch felt like gratitude. When they were finished the Muddler had tears in his eyes. He had never experienced anything that felt this much like happiness.

He touched the Joxter's mouth, looking up at him.

"Lay here," he told him. "Don't say anything. Just stay on top of me."

They stayed that way for a while. The Muddler kept his thighs open to the air, and felt the weight of the Joxter between them. Primal calm.

When the leaves and the water decided that the spell that came over them had ended, they got up and returned to the ship. The Muddler held his hand part of the way there, and then let go before they got close enough that his uncle could see them.

* * *

The Muddler never liked it when it rained on the open seas, although tonight it was a mild one. There was some thunder tonight, but it seemed more like heat lightning. The winds didn't pick up like they did in a storm.

The Joxter had, at his request, joined him in the kitchen. The Muddler made some crepes in comfortable silence.

"Are you scared of the rain?" the Joxter asked, sitting on the little couch that was crammed into the tiny room.

The Muddler shrugged. He took the last crepe off the burner, wrapped it, and sat down with him to eat.

"I've been with other people before," he tells him, around a mouthful of blackberry.

"I expect you have," said the Joxter. "You're twenty-three, aren't you?"

"It's just that it was different that time," said the Muddler. "With you, I mean. Before, I met a few people and I just wanted to...to have them. Like they were something I could hold in my hands. I didn't want to _be_ with them. So it was awkward, and unsatisfying, and..."

He took the plate away and put it into the sink. He turned around and leaned against the counter, facing the Joxter.

"I want you to show me how to do it right."

* * *

  
  


The Joxter touched his lips lightly to his cheek.

"Take off your shirt."

The Muddler did, facing away from him. He couldn't define what he was feeling - comfort, excitement, even fear.

He felt the Joxter's eyes on him.

"Lie down on the bed. Facing me."

He did, but stayed sitting up on his elbows.

"Joxter...?" he said.

The Joxter sat down on the edge of the bed. "I'm here."

The Muddler nodded slowly. "It's nothing. I just wanted to know that."

The Joxter gave his hand a squeeze, and the Muddler lay all the way down.

The Joxter reached under the bed for some of the things they had dug up out of a supply closet on the ship - some old ropes, mostly. Deftly, he caught Muddler's wrists and tied them both together, then lashed them above his head to one of the bedposts.

"How does that feel?" he murmured, running a hand down the Muddler's chest.

"I don't know," said the Muddler, pulling against the ropes, experimenting. 

"We can stop if you want."

"I want to keep going," said the Muddler, who hadn't realized until the Joxter offered to untie him much he was liking being strung up. 

The Joxter looked down at him for a moment. The Muddler liked the look in his eyes. Possessive. Almost cold.

"You look good," he said softly.

He moved his hand down inside the Muddler's pants. The Muddler took in a sharp breath, arching against the binds that kept him, and found he liked being held down tight.

The Joxter toyed with him a little, let him become good and hard, and then he pulled the rest of his clothes off. The Muddler felt pale, cold, exposed.

He liked that too.

"Fuck me..."

"Not yet," said the Joxter. He moved between his legs, kissing his way upwards, nipping the place where the inside of his hip met his crotch. The Muddler felt himself starting to shake.

"Can you - "

"I'll do what I want," said the Joxter quietly. The Muddler shivered.

The Joxter inhaled, and slipped his cock into his mouth. He was obviously no stranger to this. It went smoothly into his throat. The Muddler made a small sound, almost pained.

"Fuck, that's good..." he whispered desperately.

The Joxter moved his head, slowly, teasing. He lifted up off of him with a light pop and grinned up at him, catlike. "You like this, don't you?"

The Muddler squirmed. "Please, keep doing it! And go faster! I want to come..."

"Well, you can't," murmured the Joxter, climbing over him. He shoved his knee between the Muddler's legs, giving him something to grind against. Meanwhile, the Joxter enjoyed his body, ran his hands over every inch of it. Sank his teeth into his neck, buried his claws into his thighs.

The Muddler knew he was going to fuck him, to take him completely. He just didn't know when. And he didn't need to. He kept his eyes shut, and he didn't realize it was about to happen until the Joxter drove his cock into him. 

Whatever reserves the Muddler had been holding back were gone now. He let the Joxter fuck him, twist him this way and that, anchored in place by the unyielding ropes. He felt good. He felt _his_.

"I want to give this to you," he whispered frantically. "I want you to have everything. All of me. Just take it, take it, take it..."

He came harder than he ever had in his life, his legs wrapping around the Joxter's waist and holding them there tight. As he relaxed back into his bounds, the Joxter pulled out, worked his cock for a moment, and came on him, coating his stomach and chest.

It felt good to be wanted like that.

The Joxter didn't feel like untying him. He pulled a knife out and cut the rope instead. He snuggled up next to the Muddler, pressing his face into his neck.

"You did really well," he whispered. The Muddler moved his arms around him, pulling himself to the Joxter, as close as he could get.

"We didn't kiss..." the Joxter murmured. "I think we should kiss now." He lifted his face, found the Muddler's mouth.

It was soft, warm, tender. The Muddler wanted his hand held, and, as if the Joxter could read his mind, knit his fingers through his.

The Muddler curled up and watched him in the dim light. The Joxter's face softened, looking back.

"Stay here tonight. You're up before all of us making breakfast. No one will see you leave."

The Muddler was surprised at the sound of want in his voice. His heart skipped a beat.

"Joxter," he said. "Do you...?"

"Of course I do. I’ve been loving you all this time.”

* * *

  
  


_Tell me a story,_ he whispered.

"I know a man who - "

"Nothing that starts with 'I know a man who', they're always creepy. Something normal, something nice."

The Joxter lay looking up at the ceiling as if there was something written there in the dark.

"Once upon a time there was a Joxter."

"Mm..."

"And he met a Muddler."

The Muddler moved on his side to look at the Joxter. A soft, careful movement. Everything he did was soft and careful, the Joxter thought. He nestled into the crook of his arm, watching the Joxter, his wide eyes glinting in the moonlight.

"They went on many adventures together," the Joxter continued. "And for a long time they were never apart."

The Muddler touched the Joxter's mouth, his fingers light as snowflakes. The Joxter moved his lips, gave them an imperceptible kiss.

"And then what happened?" the Muddler asked. He slipped a fingertip into his mouth. 

"Then the Muddler let the Joxter finish his story."

The Muddler smiled, and he pulled back his hand. "Excuse me."

"I love you," said the Joxter. "Where was I?" 

"They were never apart."

He closed his eyes.

"And for a long time they were never apart. But then the Joxter..." 

His voice trailed off.

"But then the Joxter what?" asked the Muddler. He pulled the Joxter towards him, into his light embrace. The Joxter pressed a kiss to his jaw.

"But then the Joxter was very sad, because he couldn't see him anymore."

The Muddler didn't say anything.

"It was for his own good," he whispered, trailing his lips across the Muddler's cheek. "Many lucky things were in store for the Muddler, and he wouldn't feel so unhappy after he..."

"What's after?" the Muddler whispered. He pressed his mouth to the Joxter's nose. "Joxter, what's after? Tell me what's wrong."

"I can see things you can't," the Joxter whispered back, taking his hand. "Trust me. We can't anymore."

The Muddler lay in quiet terror. He had never seen the Joxter react to a single thing he sensed with anything other than grim amusement.

"When did you see it?"

"Just now."

"Was it really so bad?"

The bed creaked. The Joxter moved further into the Muddler's embrace, hiding his face in him.

"You'll be all right."

They were together one last time that night. It took them both a long time to come. The Joxter took his time with him, did all the things they both loved, kissed his neck, pinned him down with their fingers knit, put his warm hand on his side to steady him. He held on to him, made more sound than usual, pliant and pleading. He spoke to him in a whisper.

_Don't go. Stay. I love you. Stay._

Afterwards he acted as if he hadn't, and the Muddler understood.

The Joxter's lips fluttered over his face, the corner of his mouth, his eyelids. The Muddler brushed the hair out of the Joxter's eyes. They watched each other. 

The two of them lay together, listening to the sound of the waves outside of the cabin. The bed rocked softly, more so than usual. It was a choppy night, but not so much that it wasn't peaceful. Maybe it was more so, even.

"I'll still be here, for a little while," said the Joxter. "When you need me, call my name."

The Muddler tried not to rest, to extend the life of this night like unwinding a spool of thread, but he fell asleep without meaning to, and when he woke he found that the Joxter had carried him back to his tin.

The Joxter wouldn't see him after that.


	2. 2

The second he jumped overboard the Muddler regretted it. 

He hit the ground running, nails skittering on the wooden platform the Oshun Oxtra had launched from. He whipped around just in time to see the Joxter, standing at the taffrail, the sun making him a silhouette. He was leaning on it, looking, though whether it was at him or out at the horizon, the Muddler couldn't tell. 

You never could tell, really. 

There was a peace in it, in finally knowing what awful thing was going to happen, the thing that would tear the Joxter away from him. The dragon that kidnapped him, the plague that took him. A passing fear of flight.

Now, he thought, hating himself, there was nothing left but the blessings.

And they came in abundance. 

  
  


* * *

The Joxter should have been selfish, he should have been vindictive, he should have been lazy and uncaring and just _loved him less._ And they could have had a little longer. Just a little. Maybe forever. 

The Muddler knew the moment he saw her why the Joxter wanted him to have forgotten him by then.

She was perfect. But even then, she wouldn't have stood a chance.

* * *

  
  


Moomin knocked on the door to the room the Muddler shared with his wife one night while she was downstairs counting her shells. He cleared his throat and sat down on the bed, with a businesslike look about him. The Muddler thought he better sit down next to him.

"I want you to know," he said, clearing his throat again. "That everything worked out all right in the end. Joxter has since...deepened his friendship with the Mymble...several times, if I understand correctly - "

The Muddler stared at him. "Are you trying to tell me they had sex?"

Moomin was not expecting that. The Muddler blushed furiously, sank into his scarf, and was privately angry at Moomin for confirming to him, in an oblique sort of way, that he had done something he needed to feel guilty about.

Moomin recovered. "You're a married man now! I had forgotten. Men of the world, such as ourselves, can speak freely about - "

"Why are you telling me this?" the Muddler asked. "He was with her long before I got married anyway. I'm not stupid! And they're much happier without me anyway! And I'm happy too!"

He really was happy.

He burst into tears.

* * *

  
  


Soon after that the Joxter left, and every old ache the Muddler had tried to heal over opened once more. It was so easy to love him when he wasn't there. Uncomplicated. Almost satisfying. Their story had a beginning and an end, there was an explanation for everything, and there was nothing left to hurt for besides everything the Joxter was. His distant smile, his strange eyes, his funny way of thinking. The way the Muddler was so scared of him until the day he realized he wasn't. The way the Joxter cherished him, the way he held him at night, as if he had found the first, last, and only thing he ever wanted to possess.

He stopped sleeping with his wife for a while, barely ate, finally confessed it all to her at once and nearly puked in the sink. She understood everything, the way he knew she would.

They were happily married for several long years, and then, on a trip to the forest, they lost Sniff.

* * *

Sooner or later it ruined their marriage. There was an undercurrent of blame. The Muddler knew it was his fault - it always was, wasn't it? He didn't pay enough attention, he was too easily distracted, and he never knew what to do about it besides try harder, and when that didn't work, which it never did, what was left? Suicide?

Worse, he knew that while the Fuzzy forgave him with a truly genuine grace, she blamed him too. Her kindness and her sympathy felt like poison to the Muddler. 

_Why do you treat me like I'm the victim when I did something so wrong?_

Eventually he was nothing but nerves, worse than he had ever been. He stopped functioning. His wife took care of him as best she could, but eventually she reached her own breaking point, and (with the Muddler's tired encouragement) left to live with her mother. For the first time since childhood, the Muddler was truly alone.

Fortunately, Moomin - who had become a Moominpappa - heard of his divorce almost immediately. Perhaps someone who lived near the Muddler knew Moominpappa's forwarding address and thought they better let him know what had become of him, perhaps it was that Moominpappa was finally writing his memoirs and was looking up his old friends himself. For whatever reason, Moominpappa reached out to him when he needed it. They sent a few letters back and forth, which left the Muddler much improved - and it wasn't long before they both figured out that his son was living in Moominpappa's house.

"I'm coming right away," he wrote. "Please send a letter to Fuzzy, in case mine gets lost in the mail, and please write my uncle, who must surely want to see his great-nephew..."

He thought about the Joxter and his hand froze.

The Muddler sat still. The clock ticked. His heart left him.

He let it wash over him with all the silence of a whiteout blizzard and afterwards, he felt quiet inside, and outwardly calm. He had no words left for anyone, and ended the letter abruptly, making no mention of the Joxter at all.

* * *

  
  


He had been nervous about it, on top of all the other things he had to be nervous about, but when he saw him again, he found it was the one thing that didn't hurt.

First he was aware that someone was following him and his former wife, and then he was aware that whoever it was wanted them to know it, and then the Joxter stepped out of the night with his ghostlike eyes. He tipped his hat to them, looking very charming, and, like always, as if he knew something they didn't. The Muddler and the Fuzzy were both carrying a king's ransom, but he didn't have anything for his son. He put his hands in his pockets without saying a word, and passed them on the path.

_Kiss me. Hurt me. Fuck me. Don't just say nothing,_ thought the Muddler, but he was dazzled all the same. And struck by the fact that it felt right to be - however briefly - walking with the Joxter, deep in the woods, on the way to some discovery, as they once had long ago.

Whatever happened, the Joxter was with him.

The Joxter was waiting outside Moominpappa's house when they caught up. He didn't wait for them to get anxious, freeze up, or change their minds. He looked back at them with a slinky smile, and then he knocked on the door.

The Joxter turned out to be much enamored with his son, and spoke mostly to him and the Mymble, which was fine, since the Muddler had to help Sniff sort out his new collection. There was an uncomfortable but blessedly brief conversation about where Sniff should go after that. They decided his mother should have full custody. "For now", at least. She lived the closest to the Moomin family, and she didn't think Sniff should be far from his friends, she said, diplomatically.

The Joxter was listening carefully, although he was good at looking like he wasn't.

When the conversation turned away from the both of them, he touched the Muddler's hand. 

"Are you all right?" he whispered.

"I'm fine. The drinks are catching up to me...haven't you had quite a few yourself?" _Why are you touching me? Do you still?_

"No, I mean - are you _all right_."

I have to leave him again, thought the Muddler. The Joxter and the Fuzzy and my son. I have to go home alone tonight.

The Joxter slung an arm around his shoulder. Nothing romantic, or at least it didn't look that way to anyone there. The Muddler didn't question it. He was just glad.

The whole group had a joy ride in the Oshun Oxtra, but skyfaring didn't agree with seventeen of the Mymble's children, and the engine stalled while they were over the ocean. Half of the people aboard were up with Hodgkins until dawn trying to figure out how to fix it (greatly delaying the process) and the rest of them set up camp on an islet.

The Muddler gathered up all of his courage and went out to look for the Joxter, and he found him at the taffrail, looking out at where the ocean would be if they could see it in the dark.

"We should talk," said the Joxter as the Muddler approached him, mostly so that the Muddler didn't have to say it himself.

The Muddler sat at the Joxter's feet, and tried to see what he saw in the black.

"Were you happy?" the Joxter asked, after a time.

"Yes. I was very happy."

"Aren't you glad you left me, then?" 

There was a spark of light and the smell of pipe tobacco.

The Muddler didn't know what to say.

"Moominpappa thinks that when we all get back I should stay with you for a while. Says you shouldn't be alone right now."

The Muddler looked up. "Do you want to?" he asked.

"Sure. I'm not doing anything else."

"But do you _want_ to, I'm asking."

"If I didn't, I wouldn't have said yes."

The Muddler understood that this had all been decided without him and the only thing he had left to do was, blessedly, give in.

He never would have dared ask for this.

"It's not much," he said. "We couldn't fit both our collections in the tin so we got a proper house, but it's small..."

"A house will be a nice change anyway," said the Joxter, who usually slept on whatever flat surface happened to be around.

There was nothing more to say after that. The Muddler was happy, and his heart ached.

Something was about to begin.


	3. 3

They found their way back to the little house the Muddler had once lived in with the Fuzzy late at night, but all the same, it was filthy, so the Joxter immediately started crawling all over the mess trying to clean it.

"What's this? A _button!_ On the _floor!_ " he laughed. "You really are in terrible shape."

The Muddler hopped after him from place to place, begging him to put everything down. "Joxter! No! I know it looks bad, but I have everything the way I like it, please! This isn't funny!"

The Joxter wasn't much better at cleaning than the Muddler, but he managed to get it serviceable, at least (especially since the Muddler finally gave up and pitched in).

"It's past two AM," the Muddler groaned. "And everything looks wrong."

"Well," said the Joxter, leaning on his mop, "I'm tired and you better find a place for me to sleep."

"There's only one bed in the house...I don't think you'd fit in Sniff's crib."

"The sofa, then." The Joxter dropped the mop and wandered into the living room.

"No, I'll take the sofa!" cried the Muddler, picking up the mop and putting it in a corner. "You're a guest, I - " 

"It's your bed," said the Joxter casually. "Your life is already miserable, I won't take your bed."

The Muddler wasn't sure what to say about that.

But the Joxter, still smelling of dust and cleaning products (had he even washed his hands?) stretched out on the sofa and promptly fell asleep.

And so the discussion was done.

The Muddler went into the kitchen to wash up, then slipped upstairs. He changed into his pajamas and crawled into bed.

_Joxter's down there,_ he thought. _Asleep, in my house. Because he wants to be near me._

After all these years, he was still in love with the Joxter. The thought came with ease and grace, lit on him the way a bird lights on a windowsill. He glowed with it. It didn't hurt him, it just felt right.

That night he slept better than he had in months. 

* * *

"You need to get out more," the Joxter told him one day. He was trying to adjust to the Muddler's lifestyle, but couldn't get the hang of it. The Muddler let him count some of the things he owned, but the Joxter was bad with numbers and didn't understand why he had to count them to begin with.

"Isn't the number going to stay the same unless you add some or take them away?" the Joxter complained.

"Well, I'm always losing something," the Muddler confessed.

"I suppose that makes sense..."

(He seemed to realize that being allowed to touch his collection was important, and the Muddler could tell by the way he kept trying to understand it.)

Later the Joxter disappeared and didn't come back until past dinner.

"I have something for you," he said, and grinned around his pipe.

The Muddler peered at him. "Where did you get it?"

"That's not important right now," said the Joxter. He passed it over. "It's fabric and thread," he explained. "So you can extend your pockets. You've got pins and a ruler, I saw them over there somewhere..." He went to get them. "Now you can keep whatever you like in there. You overstuff them and that's why things fall out."

"I never would have thought of that..." said the Muddler, near tears. The Joxter promptly got to sewing the Muddler's coat, the pipe hanging out of his mouth.

"I didn't know you could do this sort of thing," the Muddler said. 

The Joxter shrugged. "I don't want to deal with buying new clothes when my old ones get torn, or begging someone else to fix them. It's easy to mend things when you have to."

"You fixed the engine on the Oshun Oxtra," said the Muddler. "You're good with your hands."

The Joxter smiled to himself. The Muddler wondered if he knew, and what he thought about it if he did.

"Thank you," he told him. The Joxter just shrugged again.

"I got a bottle of spirits while I was out," he said. "If you want to repay me, then tomorrow we're going for a picnic."

* * *

Tomorrow they went for a picnic. 

The Joxter didn't feel like leaving until late afternoon, and the Muddler worried they wouldn't be back until nightfall.

"What does it matter?" the Joxter asked. "We'll start a fire and stay up. I'll bring some branches."

When they got to a spot in the woods he liked - for some reason it seemed to take him a long time - the Joxter kicked the dead leaves away and cleared a patch of dirt for the fire while the Muddler spread the blanket on the grass nearby. He lay back, feeling the prickles of grass through the blanket.

_I like this a lot,_ he thought, cautiously, as if he didn't deserve to. 

They ate the sandwiches the Muddler brought, and the little apples that grew on the misshapen and gnarled trees on the windy side of a hill near where the Muddler lived, and then the two of them lay up talking until past nightfall. They each had a couple drinks.

"You know what I wonder?" said the Joxter, working the pipe in his mouth. "If someone spit across the sky, and that made the stars."

The Muddler tried as hard as he could to picture that. "Like who?"

"The-God-who-protects-all-small-creatures, I suppose."

"But why would he do that?"

"Haven't you ever felt like spitting on the world?" the Joxter asked.

"No..."

"That's right. You take everything on yourself." The Joxter sat up and tapped his pipe out on his shoe. "Here, watch this." He took a swig of the spirits, tilted back his head, and spit it all out in a fine arc. "Do you see how it catches the light?"

"You're disgusting," the Muddler pointed out, wiping flecks of spirit off of him. The Joxter laughed. He lay back down, spread eagle, smiling up at the sky.

"Sometimes I think there's no such thing as dark," he told the Muddler. 

The Muddler was silent, thinking about it. The Joxter turned his head towards him, still smiling. "Don't worry about what I mean by that. I don't mean anything at all." He yawned, settling his hands on his stomach. "Isn't it strange how sometimes that kind of line comes to you, and it feels like something important, even though it makes no sense?"

"If The-God-who-protects-all-small-creatures tried to spit on the world and just made starlight, then maybe you're right," said the Muddler.

The Joxter pulled his hat down. "I've never worried about whether I'm right or not and I don't intend to start."

The Muddler listened to the wind blow. It was a warm wind, coming from the northwest (or so he thought). A sailing wind, a mild night. 

"Are we even saying anything anymore or are we just talking nonsense?" the Muddler wondered.

"We were always talking nonsense. The point is that if I'm going to talk nonsense with a person, I'd like that person to be you."

_I love you,_ the Muddler thought. But he didn't say anything at all.

"Do you want to sleep out here?" the Joxter asked. "There'll be fog in the morning and the fire will go out, so we'll wake up chilly, but it's a shame to spend a night like this inside."

"...Okay," said the Muddler, shifting on his side on the blanket.

He expected that lying down next to the Joxter to sleep would feel comfortable, familiar. But there was something new about it, even exciting. Maybe it was because they had always slept in Joxter's bed and not outdoors.

_I'm making new memories with him,_ the Muddler thought. _Not trying to get back something I once had. I'm living like he does. In the moment._

The Joxter cleaned out his pipe and kicked his boots off.

"Good night," the Joxter told him, eventually. He lay down and was still, but the Muddler knew that the Joxter was listening for his breath. Sometimes he liked to watch over him while he was resting. Outside at night the instinct must surely have come back.

The Muddler felt warm inside.

He hoped that he'd wake up close to the Joxter, his head on his chest, their limbs entwined, but instead he found himself halfway off the blanket with his head in the dewy grass. The Joxter was already awake, staring into the dawn-lit woods.

The Muddler rolled back onto the blanket and drew his knees to his chin, watching him.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked him.

"You."


	4. 4

They ate breakfast, or that is, they split the one stale sandwich they had left. Neither of them particularly felt like going back inside. The forest was misty and blue. The road home wasn't quite visible yet.

"Come on, let's finish the bottle," said the Joxter.

"Joxter! It's dawn!"

"Who cares?" he asked. He took a swig, then passed it over to Muddler, who hadn't the heart to refuse.

They sat for a while, letting the dew settle on them, passing the bottle back and forth until it was gone.

Then the Joxter, in a sudden fit of energy, grabbed his hand and pulled him up. "Come on, let's not sit here like a couple of idiots."

The Muddler barely managed to grab the basket and blanket before the Joxter led them both, staggering, back to the house.

"You've got a...what, a gramophone? Let's see it. I feel like some music." The Joxter ran up to the door, dragging the Muddler behind him. 

"Hey, slow down!"

The Joxter was already sifting through his records. "Oh, this looks good."

"It's nothing special..." said the Muddler, worried for some reason. The Joxter put it on anyway, fumbling with the needle. The first song started to play.

"Come on, let's dance," said the Joxter. He took the Muddler by the hands and whirled him around.

"It's a slow song!" the Muddler cried. "You can't dance to it like that!"

"Says who?"

"It's pointless if you're not moving to the music," the Muddler told him.

"So, show me the right way."

The Muddler put his hand on the Joxter's waist, nervous. Immediately, the Joxter calmed down.

"Don't be shy," the Joxter said, quietly. He took his hand, and put the other on his shoulder. "You're supposed to hold hands like this, right? I think I've seen it in pictures."

"You've never danced before?" asked the Muddler, guiding him into the melody. It was an old torch song, and not a happy one. Not exactly sad, either. Sentimental - that was the word for it.

"Not properly. You'll have to lead."

"Just act naturally," said the Muddler softly. 

_They asked me how I knew_

_My true love was true_

_Oh, I of course replied_

_Something here inside cannot be denied_

_They said someday you'll find_

_All who love are blind_

_Oh, when your heart's on fire_

_You must realize_

_Smoke gets in your eyes._

They danced in silence. The Joxter let go of his hand, moving his arms around his waist. The Muddler leaned into him. He didn't worry. It felt right.

"You're a good dancer," the Joxter told him. 

"Fuzzy was a good dancer," he explained.

"You used to dance with your wife?" 

"All the time."

"To this song?"

"Sometimes."

He pressed his face to the Joxter's hair, smelled the vanilla scent of his pipe tobacco. 

"I'm not here to replace your wife," the Joxter whispered.

The Muddler stood up straight. He let go of him. The Joxter glanced at him, an unreadable expression on his face.

"You're taller than I am when you stand up straight," the Joxter told him. Then he went over to the gramophone and shut it off.

* * *

That was when the Muddler's heart really started to ache for him.

* * *

Things continued on as usual for a while, as if that night - that dawn - never happened. The Joxter carried on as he always had, eating all of the Muddler's food, enjoying naps whenever and wherever he could take them, and doing his best to contribute nothing to the household. Aside from the fact that he was keeping the Muddler sane, which was enough. It always had been.

The Muddler simply basked in his presence, and spent every moment he was near him remembering what it was like to touch his hand.

He felt himself wanting to keep things clean for him, to have three meals on the table for them, to have everything organized (somewhat) so the Joxter didn't bang his foot on a new pile of collectibles in the middle of the night. And soon everything returned to (almost) the same shape it had been in when the Muddler had a family.

But slowly, the Muddler was beginning to realize that if the Joxter had wanted him, then by now he would have taken him.

_I want you,_ he whispered into his mattress at night. _I want you, I want you._

He had to have the Joxter. He simply had to. He just wasn't sure how. Could he invite him out into the woods again? Could they feel the same way they had that night?

No, he realizes, with the ache that comes from understanding you would never feel quite the same way about something again, that sometimes the time for something had passed, no matter how important it had once been.

And then the guilt swarmed in. He thought he deserved the Joxter, did he? he thought viciously. The one who lost his son, drove away his wife - the one who had never done anything right in his entire life - he thought he deserved a man like that? 

He should get rid of everything he owned, his collection, his house, his life. He had the sudden inescapable image of setting it all on fire.

He needed him. He didn't even deserve to need him.

How long was this going to last?

The Muddler sat bolt upright in bed. There was a sound, a terrible sound - he had never heard anyone screaming like that before. A moment later he realized it was coming from downstairs.

_Joxter...!_

For a split second he thought of staying there, hiding under the covers, letting whatever it was run its course - but he couldn't do that if the Joxter needed him, he just couldn't, and in a flash he was running down the stairs and in the living room.

"I'm all right," said the Joxter, immediately. "I'm all right."

He had been having a nightmare, the Muddler realized. He was half-sitting up, wiping the sleep out of his eyes.

He sat down next to him on the couch. He saw the Joxter's shoulders relax.

"What were you dreaming about?"

"I don't know."

"Do you want me to put the kettle on?"

"In a minute."

They sat together in silence. The Muddler ached to take his hand, to touch him, something to put him at ease. _Would it be for you or would it be for him?_

"You didn't have to check on me," said the Joxter.

"Of course I did. What if you were hurt?"

The Joxter made a small, discontent sound in the back of his throat. He shifted, and put his arm around the Muddler's shoulders.

"The next time you hear it," he told him, "don't come down."

They fell asleep that way, eventually, and both woke up with backaches.


	5. 5

It was an implacable summer. It began to seem as if the sun barely set, except to give them an excuse to rush outside as soon as the first stars were out and light a fire to sit at. They talked for hours, drank sometimes, but mostly not. Sometimes spirits would come to the edge of the forest and watch them. Once, a female spirit approached the Joxter and shyly bowed. They began to dance together. He hadn't learned from the Muddler's lesson, only grabbed her and whirled her again and again.

The Muddler loved to watch him dance. He thought that if they ever left each other, that was how he should like to remember him, forever and ever.

_Kiss me,_ he thought, every night, strangely content in spite of the lack of it. _Kiss me and make this all complete._

The Muddler's friends came over for the solstice, and he made the Joxter a crown of ferns, which ended up getting lit on fire somehow. The Joxter, who thought he looked impressive and wanted to keep it on regardless (they had to wrestle it off of him) smelled like burnt hair for a while, and he made an effort to stay at arm's length from the Muddler when he realized the smell bothered him. And so the Muddler didn't notice when he started keeping his distance.

He grew pensive, started smoking by himself, sitting under one of the oaks - or standing, looking off into the horizon as if it could tell him something, which worried the Muddler dearly.

One evening, around the time that day sank into night and frogs and crickets started to call, the Muddler came and sat down next to him on the grass.

They were both quiet.

"What are you thinking about?" the Muddler asked him, after a time.

The Joxter answered immediately. "The postman had a letter for me. It was Snufkin," he said. "He wants me to come stay with him in Moominvalley."

The Muddler was taken aback. "Doesn't he live in a tent?"

"It's a big tent."

The Muddler sat and stared. _But what about me?_ he thought, and the shame of it made color rise to his face.

He said it anyway. "But you can't leave!"

The Joxter bristled. "I don't need your permission."

The Muddler realized that he had said the exact wrong thing, an ending thing, and his heart stopped.

It was done.

"Dark times are coming," said the Joxter. "If I were you I'd also like to spend them with my son."

"Sniff has his mother and Snufkin has - "

"I'm leaving tonight," the Joxter said. "Thanks for dinner."

* * *

They didn't speak to each other again. The Muddler went upstairs to his room and shut the door gently, then thought better of it and opened it up a crack. The Joxter kept to the first floor.

The night stretched on. The Muddler struggled to stay awake. He hadn't heard the door yet. Surely the Joxter would say goodbye.

He lay down on his side on the bed to rest his eyes. 

A few minutes later the door opened, close to silently. The Joxter moved in softly. It occurred to the Muddler that he was trying not to be heard.

_Maybe he's stealing something,_ he thought. _Well, let him take it. He'll need it more than I do._

He lay there, pretending to be asleep.

The Joxter sat down on the bed. He didn't say or do anything else.

Then he lay down, stretching out next to the Muddler. The Muddler could feel his eyes on him in the dark.

The Joxter touched his back. He ran his hand over his shoulderblades, down his side.

The Muddler held his breath.

The Joxter got back up, all of a sudden, the way people yank their hands back if they touch a hot stovetop. He snuck out, catlike, and shut the door behind him. 

* * *

Days passed.

The Muddler thought about writing the Fuzzy and Sniff. Dark times. Well, the Joxter was always saying things like that, wasn't he? (And, of course, the Muddler always took them seriously. He had no reason not to.)

He sat at his writing desk, chose one of five identical jars of ink, and tried to think of something to write.

Dear Fuzzy, he began.

Then what? 

I want to know if you are well, if Sniff is happy, if Joxter made it back to the valley - no, not the Joxter, he wouldn't mention him at all.

He thought about begging them to come visit. Maybe he'd just let them suggest it themselves, which they certainly would, wouldn't they? He wasn't in such bad shape anymore, either. Maybe...maybe.

But she wasn't the one he wanted anymore.

He finished the letter with "Hopping this finds you wel" and deliberated whether to put "Love, Muddler." He added simply his name.

He sent the message the next time he saw a courier on their bike, and as soon as he did he realized that the Joxter had done it again. Left the Muddler "for his own good." He wanted him with his family - he didn't care what the Muddler wanted, what the Muddler had chosen for himself.

He was furious. He balled up his fists, and then unballed them again. He didn't know what to do with fury. _Maybe I should break something,_ he thought, but he didn't really want to do it.

Later that night, as he was brushing his teeth, the Joxter's words came into his mind. Dark times. Dark times. The Muddler felt very aware, all of a sudden, of the light on in the bathroom, of each shadow it cast, the saliva heavy in his mouth. He spat into the sink and it made too loud a sound. He wanted to sit down, but he was afraid to move. He couldn't stand the sound of his own footsteps right now.

He felt watched.

He lowered himself to the bathroom floor. He put his face in his hands and waited. This would pass soon. It always did. He tried to control his breath. It was too loud. Maybe he was sick. Maybe he was having a heart attack. A stroke. No, a heart attack - what were the symptoms? He couldn't remember - it didn't matter - if something was wrong no one would find him, not in time - 

He couldn't have handled it before, he'd have had to wake up his wife, and she'd sit with him, and she'd be tired and listless all the next day, she wouldn't know what to say to him, and that was how he had been killing her, drop by drop.

But he could do it now. He had to, he was alone.

It passed, eventually. The Muddler nearly fell asleep there, on the bathroom floor, his face pressed to his knees, listening in terror to his heartbeat. But slowly, he began to calm. Thoroughly drained, he pulled himself up and went into his bedroom. He slipped under the covers and stared up at the black space where the ceiling was, then lit the lamp. He couldn't handle darkness now.

* * *

About a week later the Muddler was making at least a nominal attempt at putting a lunch together - he hadn't eaten properly in days - when he heard a knock at the door.

He looked out through the window, then threw open the door.

"Fuzzy! Sniff!" 

The Fuzzy gave him a nervous, perfectly balanced hug (affectionate, but it insinuated nothing) and then Sniff gave him a rather more satisfying one. 

"Are you staying long?" asked the Muddler. He immediately began to worry about where he'd put them up.

"I was hoping maybe the night..." said the Fuzzy. "It's a long way from Moominvalley, after all. Unless it's too much trouble!"

"Sniff can have the sofa," said the Muddler. "You..."

He met her eyes. It occurred to him all of a sudden that she was wearing a different perfume. Still a white floral, like she usually wore, but something new - it suited her.

She smiled anxiously. "Joxter said you were doing much better."

"I am...thanks to him."

He glanced over his shoulder for Sniff, who was admiring part of his collection. ("Is that _real_ pearl?" Sniff asked, though mostly to himself.)

That night they stayed up late talking, until Sniff got tired and cranky and started complaining about the draft in the house, and they decided to retire. Sniff was left alone on the couch with a pile of blankets, and the Fuzzy and Muddler washed the dinner dishes until they were sure he was asleep.

Wordlessly, the Fuzzy followed him upstairs.

"I missed being in this bed," was the only thing she said after their distant, hesitant sex. She pulled her white negligee on and lay down. She seemed content, soothed.

The Muddler felt all twisted up inside. What if the Joxter came back? He had surely - they had surely been so close to -

The Fuzzy touched his hand. "I heard that Joxter was living here."

"Yes...but he's gone to Moominvalley to live with his son."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I..."

"You still love him," said the Fuzzy. "Don't you?"

"I can't talk about it now. Not after tonight, it's not proper."

She smiled. "Imagine someone on the famous Oshun Oxtra worrying about what's proper."

The Muddler tried to smile back, but there was pain on his face, he could feel it. He put his arms around her slim waist and pressed his nose to her perfumed neck. 

"It'll all get sorted out," she told him. "Don't worry."


	6. 6

They left early in the morning, with warm embraces all around.

"Maybe someday," the Fuzzy whispered.

The Muddler spent the rest of the day in a haze, and then the night, and then another night.

The next night he woke up out of a dead sleep, all at once.

Something was wrong.

The Muddler felt it call to him, felt it wake him in the night, and it brought him out on the rooftop where he was normally afraid to climb. The flowers of certain plants had begun to fall in red waves over the land, and the Muddler could see them in the rolling hills. The wind blew through his fingers, and the moon was high.

He felt wild.

He ignored whatever it was that spoke to him, and carefully climbed back through the window.

He heard a clatter from downstairs.

_Sniff is down there -_

No. He was gone now. He could hide up here, hide under the bed...

He had to know.

What if it was the Joxter?

_What if he needed him?_ he thought once more.

He believed, almost, that he could feel him near.

The Muddler, tongue dry in his mouth, slipped onto the staircase. He peered over the banister. 

The door was wide open. Little red flowers swept into the living room, blown by a stirring wind.

He sensed movement before he saw it. A forest spirit.

But no. Different. Wrong.

Dread rose in the Muddler's throat.

She was on his mantle, legs bent the wrong way, like a spider's, clinging to the wall. She saw him - saw him, saw through him, with her head at a predator tilt, and there were more of her, two, three, and with a liquid skitter they were coming at him, eyes dripping oil, mouths all open and black -

The door banged open as the Joxter kicked it in, and he was upon them in a flash, swinging a heavy branch down on the spirit's head with a wet crack. He went for another, aiming for the ribs, and connected solidly. He dodged a bite, slammed his stick into the monsters face. Then they shrieked, all in unison, and melted into the gloom.

The Joxter stood panting in the living room, still holding his stick high, a wild look in his eyes.

He dropped the branch and embraced him fiercely, pressing the Muddler's head to his shoulder.

"I will never - _never_ \- let anything happen to you. Do you understand?" There was true anguish in his voice.

The Muddler let the Joxter hold him tight, let him hold his face pressed to his neck. He nodded.

The Joxter made a pained sound and pulled back. He rested his forehead against the Muddler's.

"I knew something would happen, I could sense it. So I came back."

"Thank you," the Muddler whispered.

The Joxter grabbed his face and kissed him. The Muddler was surprised by its force, its passion, its implacability. The Joxter's hands were on him then, undoing his jacket, pushing off his scarf.

"Joxter," the Muddler gasped, between breaths. "I want you, all of you, I want your hands on me. But I don't deserve it, I don't - "

The Joxter said nothing to him, only bowed his head and sank his teeth into his neck. The Muddler groaned, arching his back.

"I'll stop," the Joxter muttered, into his flesh.

"Don't stop," he cried, "Just - I need you to - "

The Joxter knew exactly what he needed. He took him by the shoulders and forced him face-down on the bed.

"Fuck me like you hate me," the Muddler begged.

The Joxter made a low, angry sound, and stuffed the Muddler's scarf into his mouth. He pulled on it like a pair of reins, yanking the Muddler's head up as he rammed his cock into him. Tears ran down the Muddler's face. He breathed ragged against the gag in his mouth.

"Harder..." he tried to say, but the Joxter pushed his head back down, smothering him into the mattress.

"I don't want to hear it from you," he growled.

The Muddler's legs moved uselessly. He wanted to wrap them around the Joxter, wanted to hold him, but he treasured the feeling of being denied that, of being naked, pinned, and used. He ground uselessly into the mattress, mumbling the Joxter's name. The Joxter's hand moved to the back of his neck, squeezing, and the Muddler inhaled sharply in pain.

"You're pathetic," the Joxter told him. "Absolutely pathetic. You've wanted it all this time, haven't you?"

The Muddler whimpered. Nodded.

"And I _don't_ \- " he said, with a particularly hard thrust, "know _why_ \- "

The Muddler sobbed.

"I keep coming back to _you_."

"You shouldn't," he gasped, "you shouldn't, you shouldn't, you shouldn't..."

Then the Joxter made a frustrated sound and let go of him. He picked him up and threw him on his back on the bed, gathered him in his arms. 

He touched his hips, his waist, buried his face in his soft neck, and slid his cock back into him, insistent. He covered him with his body, and they both came, not long after.

"Never," said the Joxter, exhaling, "make me do that to you again."

The Muddler only lay in his arms. He felt empty, the good kind of emptiness. He felt absolved.

The Joxter touched his face. "Did I do it right? Did I say the things you wanted to hear?"

Slowly, the Muddler nodded.

"Thank you," he said. 

The Joxter kept his face against his sweat-slicked skin. "God, I love you," he whispered.

* * *

The Joxter fell asleep next to him, and in the morning the Muddler woke up before him. He reached out for the Joxter, touched his long, strong legs, clung to his rumpled clothes. The Joxter stirred, yawned, moved closer to him. Then he opened his bright, strange eyes, and smiled.

"I love you," he told the Muddler.

The Muddler exhaled. He slipped his leg between the Joxter's, felt the way their bodies fit together.

The Joxter suddenly moved forward, wrapped his arms around him and held him as tight as he could, pressing a firm kiss to his mouth.

"I mean it. I love you."

"I know," whispered the Muddler. "Oh, I know now. I do."

Everything about that terrible night, those wild spirits, was forgotten. The Muddler brought him toast and groats, and jam to mix it with.

It wasn't a momentous occasion. They simply fell back into each other, the way they once had before. The Muddler would never forget the warmth of that morning.

"I want to stay with you," said the Joxter, spraying crumbs everywhere.

The Muddler sat on the bed, staring out of the window, smiling.

"That isn't very romantic." ("Sorry," said the Joxter, diligently pushing the crumbs off the sheets and onto the floor.)

They spent the day enjoying each other's bodies, over and over again, until the Joxter whispered "I'm exhausted..." against his mouth and gave him a fond kiss. The Muddler slipped his tongue into his mouth, and the Joxter was yielding, but tired. He rested his head on the Muddler's chest.

"I knew I loved you the moment I saw you again," said the Joxter. "I was happy to love you."

The Muddler stroked his hair. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"Why didn't you? I didn't know if you felt the same way and I didn't feel like having some awkward conversation and making everything in the house uncomfortable for a while. Just being near you made me content."

The Muddler smiled up at the ceiling. "You're lazy." 

Some birds he didn't recognize were singing in a bush nearby. They must be rare birds, seldom seen in the forest where the Muddler had built his home. Or maybe he had never taken notice of them before.

The Joxter glanced at him, grinning. "You thought I was going to be gone forever, didn't you?"

"No..."

"You did!" He simply laughed. "Did you see your family?"

The Muddler nodded. He leaned into the Joxter.

"Just talk to me. Don't manipulate me. I don't want you trying that again," he said.

"I didn't think about it that way...I won't," said the Joxter, sincerely. "It's just that I don't know how to - I've never wanted to make anyone do anything before! I never cared much about whether they...You understand. I've never felt this way before, you see."

"I've never felt this way about anyone before either," mumbled the Muddler, who was fine with leaving it at that. "How's Snufkin?"

"He's all right. Actually, he says we can both come to his tent for a while. If you don't like it, Moominmamma will put you up. I'd rather be out in the woods, though," he added, as an afterthought.

"What about my collection?" the Muddler asked. He felt, strangely, a lack of anxiety about it.

"Whatever happened to that old tin? Can you get a new one?"

"I don't know..."

"In that case," said the Joxter, "you'll have to go without. Just bring whatever you can stuff in your pockets and lock the door after us."

"My pockets...I'd have to pick out just the _right_ buttons, and washers, and pencil-ends, and..."

The Joxter rested his hand over his. "I'll give you fifteen minutes." 


	7. 7

They bedded down in the ferns that night. The Muddler kept his arms tight around the wooden box he carried all his best things in, until the Joxter gently took it from him and put it to the side. The Muddler shifted until he was touching it a little, though. The solidity felt good against his waist.

"When I was young and my parents disappeared," said the Muddler, watching the dark silhouettes of the tree branches above them. "I remember wandering around where we used to live in a daze, and looking at everything so carefully, as if I'd be able to find some hint, some clue. I remember getting down on the floor and seeing a screw in the corner underneath a dresser. It was lost in the cobwebs. Nobody would have found it under there. And I felt so sorry for it I started to cry. And then I was crying for myself, too. I hadn't cried yet, even though I was alone and scared. And now I just see certain things and it's like...I have to protect them, I have to value them, or else no one else will."

The Joxter propped his head up on his hand, looking at him with his calm, accepting eyes.

"How long was it before your uncle found you?"

"Three or four days. I was eating dried oatmeal by then. I couldn't figure out how to make it by myself. I'd add cold water and it wouldn't come out right. Uncle showed me that I had to heat it up first, it was one of the first things he did."

"I'm sorry that happened to you, Muddler."

"Don't be," said the Muddler, automatically.

"Well, I'm sorry anyway," said the Joxter, and that was that. He picked a blade of grass and put it in his mouth. 

"I'm sorry I'm like this," said the Muddler. "I was broken long before you met me."

"Your wife put you back together," the Joxter said.

The Muddler fell silent. He was right.

"I wish it could have been me," said the Joxter. He sat up stretching, rolling his shoulders in the slow manner of a lion. "I'm just the one who's here now."

"Joxter - "

"It's fine. I never believed that people save each other anyway. But you seemed so calm when you were with her. I couldn't even get jealous," the Joxter said.

"I hope I didn't make you suffer."

The Joxter merely shrugged. "I'm not good at suffering. Don't worry about it."

The Muddler took him gently by the back of his clothes and pulled him back down. He nuzzled into him, as close as he could get.

"I love you," the Joxter told him. "I never forgot about you, you know. I figured back then that to you it was a few good times before you really became an adult, and to me it would just be one adventure out of many, and in some ways it was like that, but...you were special."

"How am I special?" the Muddler murmured into his shirt. "You're amazing. I can't possibly have...I don't know what I did."

The Joxter thought about it. "Because you're so sincere. You never hid yourself, or lied. I felt like I could see right through you. And I loved everything I saw. There was never anything bad inside of you, Muddler. I know you feel that way, but there isn't."

The Joxter put his arms around him, rested his chin on top of his head. "I wanted to make you happy." 

"You did make me happy. You're making me happy right now."

The Joxter laughed quietly. "Good."

The Muddler nuzzled him. "Can I ask you a question? Something's been on my mind."

"No, you can't."

"Oh, excuse me..."

He could almost hear the Joxter smiling. "Don't be so serious. Of course you can."

"Why didn't you stay and raise Snufkin?" He was terribly nervous about meeting him, and about whatever questions the young man might have for them both.

"Mymble didn't tell me she was pregnant. Maybe she didn't find out until after I left, maybe she didn't think I would be a good father so she never had me sent for. I never bothered to ask. It would just cause fighting, and tears, and I'd probably get my feelings hurt, and it wouldn't change anything, so why bother?" He blew on the grass in his mouth. It made a buzzing sound. For a moment it blurred with the sound of crickets and frogs, all around them in the woods.

The Muddler wanted to ask him if he regretted not raising his son, if he would have been happy to do it back then if the option was presented to him, but he figured he'd only get "Why bother?" again to the first question and "Who knows?" to the second.

Suddenly he felt horribly afraid. "Joxter, you're mine, right?"

"For as long as you want me."

He spat the grass out of his mouth and turned his face into the Muddler, and almost immediately fell asleep.

The Muddler stayed up for a while, lying still and watching the stars. He used to hate nights spent alone, but he felt safe somehow, even though the Joxter was asleep. A small meteor shower came and went, and the Muddler counted six shooting stars before he felt the day's journey catch up with him, and soon he closed his eyes.

* * *

They traveled for another day. Night had just fallen when they reached Moominvalley, but the path was lit by paper lanterns, enchanted to burn for a very long time. Perhaps there had been some kind of celebration - the Muddler didn't know. They walked through the path through the forest, and they heard the harmonica long before they saw Snufkin.

"It's my son," said the Joxter, in a low voice. "He plays." The Muddler noticed the way he rolled the words "my son" around his mouth, as if he was just getting used to them. They had a certain weight to them, a weight that seemed unnatural coming from the Joxter.

The song faded, and the night sounds of the forest took over once more.

"Snufkin?" the Muddler called.

There was a pause.

"Ho!" the young man shouted back. "I'm right off the trail! Can you see me?"

They spotted his campfire. 

The Muddler hung back behind the Joxter, examining Snufkin closely. They hadn't really spoken the night they all met.

Snufkin's eyes were wide, the Muddler noticed, though they lacked the degree of intensity of the Joxter's, and he had a thoughtful aura about him that the Muddler liked. He played beautifully, and he had heard that he was always surrounded by friends no matter how often he left. They would simply wait for him for however long he wanted. He really must be something special.

Immediately he was jealous, even though he knew he shouldn't be.

"Hm," said Snufkin, peering at his tent. "I don't think it's big enough to fit all three of us."

"So I'll sleep in the tree," said the Joxter with a yawn. "I'm tired anyway. Night." Before anybody could argue he stepped right out of his clothes and scurried up the nearest one like a cat, stretching out on one of the lower branches.

Snufkin shrugged peacefully and got in his tent, and the Muddler crept inside after a moment, clinging to his box and feeling very awkward. He unfurled his bedroll, and lay there trying not to look at the stranger next to him. The campfire outside began to fade, and to the Muddler the snaps and cracks of burning wood seemed especially loud, as if the fire wanted to go out with a bang. He focused on the sound.

Snufkin was watching him.

"Hey, Muddler?" he whispered.

"...Hm?" 

"What's my father like?"

He said "my father" the same way the Joxter said "my son."

"He's the most wonderful person I've ever met." The Muddler thought about it, listening to the wind worry the canvas. "He used to scare me, but then being near him put me at ease. I like thinking about him, like wondering about the next thing he's going to say or do, although I once thought that'd scare me too. It's not that I don't understand him - though maybe I don't..." That thought gave him some passing sadness. "I don't think he understands himself either. But then again, I don't think he tries." The Joxter was too pure for that.

"Oh." Snufkin was quiet for a while. 

"Muddler?"

"Yes?"

"Are you and my father in love?"

"We are," he said, with a sureness that surprised him.

The Muddler wanted to ask him if it was all right, but before he could, Snufkin simply said, "I see. I'm glad he has someone."

Snufkin rolled over on his side, and said nothing else until morning.

The next day the Muddler found that Snufkin had woken up before he did. He went outside the tent and found Snufkin sitting on a tree stump, whittling an apple core with an all-purpose knife.

The Joxter rolled out of the tree and landed on his feet. He was still in his underthings. He fumbled around in the pile of dew-damp clothes at the base of his tree and found his pipe tobacco. In a moment the air was filled with the scent of vanilla, mixing with the morning campfire.

"Morning," said Snufkin.

"Is breakfast on?" said the Joxter.

"I'll make it," said the Muddler hurriedly. Snufkin shook his head. 

He looked back and forth between his father and the Muddler.

"I think tonight I'll take the tree," Snufkin said. "You two can have the tent."


	8. 8

The Joxter told it to him almost every time he spoke - "I love you. Where's breakfast?" or "I love you. Are you cold?" - though anyone listening would have heard it in his every word regardless. He said it until the Muddler believed it.

They lay together near a little lake they had found, brought their sleeping bag out into the woods so they wouldn't bother Snufkin. It was a clear night, they didn't need a tent. 

"I love you," the Joxter murmured, and he said it as if it were the first time. He always did. 

He turned his head to kiss the Muddler, the lightest touch against his lips. He brushed his mouth against his, and breathed.

The Muddler sighed softly through his nose, letting the Joxter guide it. He didn't want to give him one of his rough, clumsy kisses when he was being so light, so tender.

The Joxter moved on top of him, settling his weight over him in a way that felt masculine, comforting. It reminded the Muddler of the first day they spent together, nearly twenty years ago. He touched the Joxter's back, as if he thought holding him too tightly would ruin it. He knew the Joxter liked the warmth of his hands.

After a long while in silence they fell asleep like that, together, among the sounds of the night birds and the wind in the reeds. When they woke up near dawn, in the blue hour before the sun is visible but the night sky has already begun to light, they were both erect, drawn to each other's bodies in their sleep. The Joxter didn't open his eyes as he reached between them, touched the Muddler, took him in his hand. The Joxter made a quiet, comforting, sleepy sound, running his thumb over the head of the Muddler's cock, his face still against his neck.

He reached out with one hand and fumbled in the cold air for the lubricant in Muddler's pack, and then they were making love, the Joxter's hips moving in the smallest, finest way while the Muddler kept his hand on the small of his back.

"Oh," the Muddler whispered. "Oh..."

The Joxter took his weak hand and brought it to his lips, kissed between his fingers, the soft underside of his wrist. 

The Muddler sighed contently, his legs around the Joxter's waist. Sweat appeared on his brow, comforting in the cool summer night. He didn't want to move. He just wanted the Joxter to touch him.

The Joxter's movements stayed slow, but they deepened. The Muddler shivered, feeling every part of him inside of him. He felt cold, and the Joxter moved the top half of the sleeping bag up around his shoulders and took him deeper in his arms. The Muddler rested his chin on the Joxter's shoulder, closing his eyes.

The Joxter fucked him long and slow and heavy, and the Muddler kept his eyes shut and listened to his shuddering breath against the Joxter's skin. He ran his fingers through his soft black hair, and waited for him. The Joxter came long before the Muddler did, but he took the Muddler in his gentle hands and coaxed it out of him, whispering "Come for me. Let go. Let go."

With the smallest gasp, he did.

* * *

_That night he dreamt of the Joxter, standing on a bare hill, his eyes glinting gold in the moonlight. He was holding a spear, and it looked right with him, as if a natural extension of his body, another violent limb. He couldn't see his face, only his form, a silhouette in the dark, and he was afraid, both for him and of him. He watched him the way an animal watches, unmoving, while in the distance a beast called and the forest burned. When he awoke he remembered smoke and the long spear and nothing else._


	9. 9

They made love constantly, the way they had when they were first together. The Muddler felt safe in his arms, and it was a place that his fear drove him to as well as his love, in his weakness and in his strength, and he returned there again and again. He gave more to him each time, placed all that he was in the Joxter like returning seashells to the water.

He loved him, and he was happy.

One day the Muddler awoke to find that the Joxter wasn't next to him in the tent. He thought nothing of it at first. Sometimes the Joxter was up unusually early, or unusually late. The Muddler liked catching him at odd hours, his eyeshine in the firelight.

Today, however, there were voices outside. The Muddler stuck his head out, and then hurried into his clothes. Moominpappa was visiting the camp.

"...and Snufkin can sleep in the bed with Moomintroll," Moominpappa finished. He was speaking to the Joxter, whose eyes were distant and abnormally troubled. Snufkin was putting his camp kit into his backpack with an expression very much like his father's.

"What's going on?" the Muddler asked.

"Forest's not safe anymore," said the Joxter. "We're moving into the house. Sniff had a bedroom there and it's empty now, there's room for us."

The Muddler had at least three competing thoughts all at once - what the danger might be, whether Sniff would be safe with the Fuzzy, and what Moominpappa thought about the two of them in bed together under their roof. He tried to get them in order and think of the right thing to ask.

"What sort of danger?" he decided. It was by far the most pertinent question. The air in the valley seemed colder just then. The wind was blowing in a way that seemed almost hostile. Perhaps there would be a storm.

The Joxter shrugged. "If I knew, I'd tell you."

"Forebodings," Moominpappa explained. Usually they didn't take them this seriously - seriously, but not that seriously. "He came to us this morning asking if we could put the three of you up."

The Joxter showing foresight was certainly enough to make anyone worry. No wonder they were organizing this operation in a hurry.

The Muddler thought of the Joxter screaming at night.

"It's probably nonsense, isn't it?" said Snufkin reluctantly.

The Joxter grinned, showing all his teeth. "If we're lucky."

The Joxter made everyone wait for him while he had a smoke, sitting in tense silence on a fallen tree. The Muddler looked at Moominpappa (who just shrugged anxiously at him) and then up at the grey sky.

"A storm," the Muddler decided. "Yes, there's definitely going to be a storm..."

No one said anything. Whatever the danger was, it was worse than that. They all knew it.

A storm-wind really was kicking up, though. The grass rattled. A twig twitched across the ground. Moominpappa told the Muddler to get his things and help him start breaking down the tent. 

They didn't speak on the hike to the Moominhouse, although the Muddler desperately wished they would. The sky was ugly by the time they set out, and lightning was flashing silently in the far distance.

Moominmamma was waiting in the doorway when they arrived. She had just taken the laundry in and the line was still out, creaking in the darkening air.

"Thank goodness," she said. "I didn't think you'd make it in time." She closed and locked the door behind them. Snufkin went off to see Moomintroll, and Moominpappa lit the storm lamps that were out on the kitchen table.

"I like the way it feels just before it starts raining," spoke the Joxter, into the silence. "The anticipation in the air."

A few raindrops hit the window then, as if the Joxter had called it down himself, and then, almost immediately, it became a torrent battering the house. The four of them stood still, listening to it hit the roof. The flames in the storm lamps guttered.

"I'm going to make sure I closed all the windows," Moominmamma murmured, and slipped off.

The Joxter stretched out on a sofa in the parlor, Moominpappa took a chair, and the Muddler sat cross-legged on the floor, next to the Joxter. The Joxter reached down and ruffled his hair, which almost put him at ease.

"It's just rain," he told the Muddler, the last word swallowed up by the crash of thunder.

"It's right on top of us from the sound of it!" the Muddler whispered.

"The roof'll hold. It was worse out on the ocean, remember? We had to get out there and man the trysail if Hodgkins decided we couldn't heave-to."

(The Muddler felt ashamed that his uncle always told him to stay below deck or in his can during squalls.)

"I want to go upstairs and take a nap," said the Joxter, stretching like a cat. "Come with me," he said to the Muddler.

It didn't take the Muddler long to realize that the Joxter only did it because he wanted to hold him in bed. 

"I feel better," murmured the Muddler, into the Joxter's chest. Wind was getting through the cracks in the windows - the Moomins hadn't fit the sill correctly - and blew the freshly-laundered curtains. The room smelled like clean linen.

The Joxter moved down until he was eye level with the Muddler. He pressed a kiss to his mouth, a chaste one.

The storm passed quickly. The Muddler listened to the sound of thunder rolling in the distance as the rain began to stop. He stared out the window from their bed, watching for the sun. The clouds parted before the rain ended, and for a few precious minutes there was a sun-shower.

"Are you looking at the sun?" he asked the Joxter.

"Mmhm," the Joxter mumbled, shifting a little bit so he could see better.

"I love you," the Muddler told him. "I'm glad you're here with me."


	10. 10

It was a new moon, and the shutters were closed. Their bedroom was absolutely dark. The Muddler felt rather than saw the Joxter, a comforting warmth behind him, his hand touching his in the black.

"It's nice to have sex in a bed," the Muddler whispered, pulling the warm sheets up over his shoulders.

"Is it? I liked pulling you behind a bush and rutting you on the pine needles," said the Joxter.

"You like everything," the Muddler pointed out.

"I like _you_."

He felt the Joxter press a kiss between his shoulderblades, press his face there, sigh softly.

"Something's on your mind," the Muddler said. "You're not yourself lately." Anything weighing on the Joxter's mind was a cause for concern.

"Have you felt it too?" the Joxter asked.

The Muddler closed his eyes.

He thought of that terrible night, the night when the Joxter saved him - how strange he had felt then, just before. He had climbed out on the roof, as if he was searching for something...as if he were answering a call. He thought of the wind, how it had seemed slightly cold that night, and the red stems flowing over the fields.

"I don't know," said the Muddler.

The Joxter climbed over him and slid to the ground. The Muddler sat up. The Joxter hid his face in his lap, found his hands. He breathed.

"If I go to it, you won't follow me. Right?"

The Muddler felt his heart in his throat. "Joxter, what's going on? You're scaring me."

"You should be scared," said the Joxter.

The Muddler pulled his hands away, fumbled, found his soft black hair in the dark.

"I'm not leaving you this time. I swear. When I left the Oshun Oxtra I was almost still a child. I'm not afraid like that anymore."

"You are."

"Stop telling me what I feel!" 

The Muddler immediately quieted down. He was going to wake the whole house up. Whatever this conversation was about, he didn't want the Moomins involved.

"I'd follow you anywhere," the Muddler said, but softly. "Please, just be honest with me. Tell me what's going on."

"I've been having strange dreams," the Joxter said. "I'm holding a weapon, and it feels good in my hands. The trees are burning. Ash is being swept into the river by the rain, and mud is mixing with the blood on the ground. There's going to be a war, and when it comes, I'll have no choice but to follow."

"Why a war?" the Muddler whispered.

"The men are burning the forest. The spirits don't have their natural homes. Their natural forms. You saw them yourself, they're coming out in droves. Small beasts aren't so far from spirits. I'll feel it too. And maybe you will, if you haven't yet. Soon we'll be picking over those ashes..."

He felt the Joxter grin.

The Muddler leaned forward, reaching for the candle on the bedside table, jostling the Joxter off his lap by mistake. After a few moments of blind groping he found the matchbook and lit the candle. He needed light.

"I don't want to change," he whispered.

The Joxter's dark hair looked reddish in the candlelight. The Muddler thought of blood.

"I don't think it happens to Muddlers," said the Joxter. "I don't know for sure. I know it doesn't happen to Moomins. But mumriks are different. We were made wild. So I'll go to it. That war lives in me. I feel it in my veins."

He climbed back into bed and lay facing the wall. The Muddler protected the flickering candle with his hands, until he was sure it was going to stay lit. Then he slipped in bed with the Joxter.

"I love you," he told him. It was what they always said to each other, always.

"Stay here and love me. It's the only thing you can do."


	11. 11

The Muddler was half-asleep the night they made love for the last time, and all he remembered was the way the Joxter sank into him, their tangle of limbs, his lips on the back of his neck. He had half-woken to the Joxter touching his thigh, whispering his name - I was dreaming about you. I need you now. He felt the Joxter's erection pressing into him.

When it was over he fell back asleep in a haze of pleasure, unsure whether he had even opened his eyes the whole time it came and went. The Joxter's arms were around him, and that was all that mattered.

He thought he remembered feeling the Joxter slip out of bed, kneel down on the floorboards in front of him and touch his lips with his fingertips, light enough not to disturb his sleep. The Joxter kissed his mouth, a chaste kiss, and then he was gone. The Muddler hadn't woken all the way up.

He wasn't beside him when he woke up in the morning, and this time the Muddler knew - could sense it, somehow - that he was gone for good.

To put it simply, he was mad.

That morning he helped Moominmamma with the dishes and slammed them in the rack with a rattle each time he was finished with one.

"Dear, you're going to break them!" Moominmamma exclaimed. "What's wrong?"

"Where did the Joxter go? Do you know?" demanded the Muddler. No one had brought it up over breakfast and he had no desire to let it become the elephant in the room.

"Well...I suppose he went wherever it is Joxters go," said Moominpappa, smoking his morning pipe and reading the newspaper, placidly ignorant of the outside world, or rather, untouched by the mysterious and awful thing that had lit the Joxter's veins on fire.

The Muddler made a frustrated sound, dropping a dish back in the murky sink.

"He thinks I'm going to mope around the house missing him until he's good and ready to come home, _again_. I'm not doing it. I can't take it. I just can't take it." His words started off impassioned and trailed off into a mutter. Still, he finished his thought: "I'm going after him."

Moominpappa glanced up. Moominmamma wiped her paws on her apron. "Didn't he say it was dangerous out there?" she asked. "Or did he just mean the storm?"

"He didn't mean the storm," said the Muddler, feeling exhausted now that he had gotten at least a little outburst out of his system. "He says there's something wrong with the forest."

His eyes glazed over, momentarily. "The territory is ruined, the lines are gone, the spirits gnaw at their own bones, and the wild ones pick over the boundaries - fight in the runoff and the flame..."

Moominpappa kept looking at him over the top of his paper. "You sounded a bit like the Joxter just now."

"...Excuse me." The Muddler shook his head. It was hazy, confused. And now he wanted to pretend he had never had this whole conversation and curl up somewhere and sleep. 

And yet.

"I'm leaving in an hour," he said. "And I'm _not_ taking my things with me. I don't need them."

"Take the rifle in the cellar, dear," said Moominmamma.

* * *

The Muddler, dressed in his traveling-clothes, stepped outside to head for the cellar - and he saw it immediately. Felt it, rather. The Moominhouse had been well-insulated against such insults, but a great heat came rolling down the grassy hillside and the wind was blowing ash. Towards the horizon the sky was red.

It was an unnatural wind, the Muddler realized, holding his coat shut - one caused by the heat...

He sensed someone standing near and for the first time noticed Snufkin. He was contemplating the glowing red portion of the sky and smoking a pipe. ( _How can he stand to smoke along with all this ash? That's something his father would do,_ the Muddler thought.)

"Snufkin?" the Muddler called over the wind. "Who's burning the forest?"

"I don't know and I don't care," Snufkin called back.

"Are you leaving like your father?"

Snufkin took the pipe out of his mouth. "No," he said. "No, I think I'll stay here with Moomintroll."

The Muddler nodded absently, squinting against the wind. He made his way to the cellar. The ash wasn't staying in the grass, instead being blown right out of it again, but the stone structure was strong enough to catch it, and there was a black stain on the forest-facing side of the cellar. The Muddler unbolted and opened the door, and was faced with the harsh, dry scent of the underground. And darkness. Of course, he was afraid of the dark.

He was too disgusted with himself to pay it much mind. He marched downstairs, leaving the door open so he could see at least a little, and took the gun from where it was leaning between an umbrella stand and broken hat-rack.

He started off towards the forest. It seemed the reasonable place to go.


	12. Chapter 12

The dark forest. Just past sunset, or close enough. Hard to tell in the summer canopy, the vast trees and their dark greens spinning inkily down into black.

The Muddler was lost. He felt absolutely calm.

This was what his son felt, he told himself. He had a distance from his thoughts, somehow, as if he were teaching it to someone else. 

This was what his son felt:

He was distracted by an unusual turn of the path, something that most people would have been able to navigate around. A place where the narrow road happened to cross a bald section of forest, a path made by the endless roaming hooves of the deer and not the path carved out and marked by the hands of the small beasts. Someone who doesn't pay enough attention might mistake a deer path for a manmade one. Of course it would lead nowhere, or perhaps down to a river or lake. His thoughtless father had noticed him lagging behind - had he noticed him lagging behind? he couldn't remember - and chalked it up to a boy looking at rocks and ferns and day moths. He hadn't even considered that the path might be confusing, and he took one way, his back turned, invisible, and Sniff took the other...and so his son had wandered in the forest until the family Moomintroll had found him.

The Muddler waited in his calm, though for what, he couldn't say. He just kept moving forward, the rifle now familiar in his arms. When he couldn't see the ground in front of him, he stopped.

He sat down with his back against a tree, gun in his lap, and kept waiting.

Not long after, he fell asleep.

_It was his body, the Joxter's body, that he woke up in. He rolled his wet shoulders, wet the way a horse foams with sweat after a long stampede. His eyeteeth nicked his lip, and he knew by the taste of it that the blood was his own, the way a dog recognizes its master by scent. His legs were sunk deep in the earth, and the air was dry, and the heat was harsh..._

_This is not a love song. You've reached the place where it is no longer. It is a hymn, a prayer. To what, or to who, we've long forgotten. That is why we pray._

The Muddler's eyes snapped open.

He knew where to go.

* * *

Southeast. 133 degrees.

He hadn't yet reached the burnt part of the forest, though from the smell in the air he couldn't have been more than several miles out. There were wild grapevines to give him his breakfast (something he hadn't thought a minute about) and in one of the pockets of his traveling coat he found an old tin of crispbread.

He had no doubt that wherever the Joxter was, he would take him in and feed him. It wasn't ill-preperation, in and of itself, but a sign of his trust. And he couldn't be far behind him now.

The Muddler slung the gun around his shoulder and scurried up a tree, trying to find a good vantage point.

When he broke the canopy he could see what he was looking for immediately. There it was, the outer edges of the forest fire. It looked large. It looked abyssal. Dead trees went all the way up the side of the mountain and disappeared over its looming rim.

The Muddler was going to have to climb.

* * *

Southeast. 152 degrees.

He climbed until he reached the top of one of the peaks and then the feeling left him around nautical twilight. The feeling of sureity. He looked towards the ember glow on the horizon, not as large as it was before - a red slit in the skyline - but tenacious. Above it was blue, and above that, stars.

He would dream tonight, he decided.

He settled against whatever he could find in the ashy, grey, gnarled-stumped incline - a boulder? No, it should have been recently alive - a smoked-out larch tree, then - and fell asleep, ignoring the hunger gnawing in his belly.

* * *

_His legs were sunk deep in the earth, and the air was dry, and the heat was harsh._

The Muddler rose, stripped his sore back away from the larch tree.

_A dam had burst. A large one, by the reckoning of small beasts, a dam made by generations of beavers. Hot mud was pouring down the slope._

He walked towards the redness in the sky, the false sunrise in the night. He walked until it seemed to float to him.

_He held his ground. He raised his spear._

The Joxter was at the bottom of the next ridge.

_The first soldier hit him with all the strength he expected, and he grinned, and oh, he hadn't wanted this to be easy, not at all - he held his spear parallel and let him slam against it, letting them both go tumbling down the incline, the Joxter gaining his footing back almost immediately and sliding, sliding towards the stamped earth clearing where the mumriks had put up their war-tents._

_He landed well but_ _the enemy didn't, staggering heavy, pocked knife flashing all the same. It didn't hit the Joxter, but it came close._

And he was near now. He heard the burning in the distance. More than that he heard the small beasts, dozens of them or perhaps more, their war cries and death cries and unclassifiable sounds of rage and fear.

_He had bitten off more than he could chew, he realized, all at once, when the enemy recovered all too quickly and came at him again._

_He whipped his spear around to face him._

And then the Muddler woke up.

Or, he came back to his senses with the chill of adrenaline suddenly coursing through his veins, heightening his awareness of the night air and the battle and the burning. He was crouched behind a tree, hiding, his fingers sweat-slick on his rifle. The fire was close, enough to put ember in the air and stain the night sky red, but the wind was blowing it in another direction. He was at the outskirts of some kind of encampment, from the looks of it, and at the center of it two people were fighting - 

"Oh, no," the Muddler whispered.

The Joxter was fast. Limber. But he had a slightish and leggy build, like an overgrown boy, and he relied on speed too much. His opponent was stocky, low to the ground, and yet, just as fast as the Joxter, and that meant he outclassed him, and as they crashed together again and again, knife blocking spear or spear barely managing to block knife, it was clear that the Joxter wasn't going to win.

The Muddler had to do something.

He did the only thing he could do.

He waited. And prayed.

And let the Joxter move.

"Come on," he whispered, eye to his rifle. "Come on..."

The Joxter and the enemy mumrik clashed again and again, each jumping away from each other, catlike, before swarming in again. The enemy was closing in on him, letting less and less time pass between one assault and the next. Finally, the Joxter managed to brace his spear against him and push himself far enough off - 

The Muddler aimed and fired.

The enemy dropped dead.

The Joxter stood there, panting wildly, and the Muddler realized he had been tearing into the enemy with his mouth and hands, there was blood all down his chin, and he understood in that moment what it meant to love a mumrik, but it didn't matter because he was out of the forest and he was running to him and he was in his arms and they were in love.

The Joxter whispered his name, cradled his head to his shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he told him. "I never meant for you to see that."

The Muddler sniffled, hid his face in the Joxter's shoulder. All around them, the camp was quieting down. Whatever force had tried to invade it was falling back.

"Never leave me again," the Muddler told him. "You know I'll help you. You know I'll stay by your side." He took a deep breath. Tears were streaming down his face, blown back by the unnatural wind. "I killed for you. I proved that."

The Joxter pulled back and took the Muddler's face in his hands, and there was more pain written in his strange eyes than the Muddler ever could have imagined.

"Yes," he said quietly. "You did."

The Joxter pressed his mouth to the Muddler's forehead, and they stood there like that for a very long time.


	13. 13

The Joxter took him to his tent after. To get there they had to cross the clearing where the mumrik the Muddler had shot lay. The Joxter put his hand on his back, between his shoulderblades, and told him not to look away.

"Look. You have to look if you want to stay. You'll be seeing a lot more of this." His voice was soft. It didn't order or plead.

The Muddler looked. The body had already gone stiff, with its fingers going every which way, as if clawing at something invisible in the summer air. There was almost no blood. It had died, more or less, the moment the Muddler shot him, he realized, and it hadn't had time to bleed. Its heart had stopped immediately. The Muddler stared at it and desperately tried to think of what its last thoughts might have been, but he couldn't come up with anything. It was too still. It didn't look like a person anymore.

_Oh God,_ he thought, _that was somebody's baby boy._

He couldn't make himself believe it, and that was more frightening than anything else.

The Joxter opened the flap of his tent for him. There was a heavy smell inside, which the Muddler thought was like suede. Animal furs were on the flat ground. The Joxter took his rifle from him, with sympathy in the movement of his hands, and laid it next to a tentpole, where he also put his spear.

"Lay down," whispered the Joxter gently. 

He did. The Joxter lay next to him, and he ran his hands over his body, rubbing his arms and his legs. It grounded him.

"It's okay," he whispered. The Muddler realized he was trembling. He didn't know what he wanted. He didn't know what he was feeling. He did know he was grateful for the Joxter.

"I don't regret it," he mumbled. "It was to save you."

Something about saying that plunged him into a dark undertow of guilt, and the Joxter just kept going. The Muddler closed his eyes and focused on the rough feeling of his hands, tight around his muscles, keeping him here. 

Sooner or later the Muddler went to sleep, and by the time he woke up the next morning and stuck his head out the tent all in terror, the body had been removed. To where, he neither knew nor cared. He only knew that it was gone.

* * *

No one seemed to care that he was in the camp, although he got a few strange looks here and there. Not long after he arrived they figured out he could cook, and he was somehow enlisted into preparing meals for everyone.

"Everyone" was strong language. The people in the camp turned out to largely be the Joxter's extended family. The Joxter pointed out a few cousins that he particularly liked, but otherwise he didn't know their names. They had all arrived here at once, and put up tents in a semicircle around a large bonfire, which they kept continuously burning for no apparent reason. 

They had spontaneously, and again with no real reason, staked out this territory as their own. The other mumriks had settled nearby and were now making opportunistic grabs at it when the burn blew their way. So far, they hadn't succeeded in claiming much. The Joxter thought they had more forces coming, and that the war was a lot larger than this, so they shouldn't rest on their laurels. So be it. 

"I didn't know mumriks were territorial," the Muddler told the Joxter.

"How many mumriks have you met?"

"Two?"

The Joxter laughed. "You're right. We're not like this usually. I told you. Things are unnatural and always changing. We're changing along with them. And always for the worse."

The Muddler wondered about his peculiar possessiveness over him, the way he had said that he never wanted to make anyone do things before - the way he had said he never wanted to protect anyone the way he wanted to protect the Muddler - and wondered if the burn had something to do with it.

He hoped it didn't.

It took several quiet days before the Muddler let the Joxter make love to him in that small, dank tent. He arranged things so that the softest of the furs, sealskin, was on top of the pile, and he laid him down and asked him, "Now?"

The Muddler nodded.

The Joxter gave him a grateful kiss. It deepened immediately, the Muddler's mouth opening to his, and his arms went around his shoulders as if that was their natural place. The Joxter's body was so simple. So easy.

It was slow this time. The Joxter was responsive, more so than he had ever been before. He made a sound like a whimper, and pressed his face to the Muddler's neck, just barely moving in him, though enough to make the Muddler gasp, breathe hard, move his hips in the same slow rhythm. The Joxter held the Muddler to him, hiding his face. 

"Oh..." whispered the Joxter. "Oh."

Then he told the Muddler in a desperate voice that he wanted him to come with him, that he was close, and he took the Muddler's cock in hand and pulled it with long, deep, compelling movements, in time along with his body, and they both climaxed, breathing harsh against each other's mouths. 

The Joxter lay on top of him, and they kept breathing that way, their mouths together, and it was impossible to tell where the Joxter's breaths ended and the Muddler's began. It was so familiar, the Muddler thought, in a haze. 

Primal calm. 

The Joxter took him to a thin but deep stream where they both bathed. No one was there this time of night. The water was cold in spite of the warm weather, and the fire, and it would have been murky even in the day. The Muddler was glad to get out of it and curl up on the pelt the Joxter had brought, their bodies together, each borrowing heat from the other. 

"Never leave me again," the Muddler said. 

"I don't want this either. I don't want to constantly be leaving and for you to constantly be coming after me, over and over again. I won't do it anymore," the Joxter promised. "But why did you come? I told you there was going to be a war. Surely you couldn't have wanted..."

He trailed off into a mumble.

The Muddler lifted up his head. "Joxter..."

"What _is_ it that you want?"

The Muddler thought about it. 

"I just want to be your boy."

There was silence for a moment. 

"Okay," whispered the Joxter. He touched his face. "Okay."

The Muddler settled back into him, curling into his side with his knees up to his chin.

"When all this is over we'll build a little house for ourselves. Just the two of us," the Muddler told him, rather than asked him. "I'll start up a collection again, and I'll plant fruit trees all around the house for you to take care of, so that you'll have something for yourself. What else would you want?"

"A hammock to sleep in. And I'd sleep until late evening, when it's blue, and when you were tired of waiting for me you'd come and climb up on the hammock with me and upset it, and I'd lie very still with you until it stopped swinging. And we'd count fireflies from there, and listen to the crickets and the frogs."

In the meantime, there was war. They dressed eventually, and towards a sleepless dawn they heard singing from the camp, wordless and eerie, to the setting moon more so than any god. The Joxter, the Muddler saw in relief, didn't join in. He never completely joined in with anything.


	14. Chapter 14

War was boring, it turned out. It involved a lot of waiting.

No one in the camp spoke to him, in fact, they rarely spoke to each other. When they did it had a violence to it, raucous shouting and a mean sort of laughter - they eyed him sometimes, and then they all began to laugh at once. The Muddler didn't feel safe there, though he had the impression that they all respected and feared the Joxter, and that his reputation would protect him. The Joxter hovered around him most of the time, sensing that his presence was the only thing keeping the Muddler from being dragged into the pines and used for the pleasure of God knows who, but sometimes, when the Muddler was occupied, he deigned to sit with his relatives. 

This was one of those nights. The Muddler was cleaning up the accumulated dirty dishes, pots, and pans, carrying them to and from the water. It kept him on his feet, and no one was paying attention to him scurrying here and there. 

Meanwhile, a circle was gathering around the bonfire. The Muddler watched it with one eye. The mumriks liked to play-fight (they had no instinct for formal training), and sometimes it got too serious.

The Joxter was up on the docket, it seemed. The Muddler bit his lip, holding still, shifting the things in his hands so he could see. He approached his opponent, circling him like a prowling cat - a younger mumrik, smaller, thinner, fear obvious in the sweat on his temple and the whites of his eyes - and the Joxter, with his supple body and instinct for aggression - 

\- went too far.

The other mumrik had no chance. The Joxter pounced on him, buried his knee into his chest, grabbed him by the hair and slammed his head into the ground, did it quickly, efficiently, and with a vengeance - and the Muddler saw them drag him off in a streak of blood while the Joxter panted like a rabid dog. The Joxter looked up suddenly, his head snapping upwards like a startled animal's, and the Muddler knew he was looking for him, and he made as if he were still carrying those pots and pans to the stream to be washed, completely ignorant of what the Joxter had just done. He didn't need to know he saw everything.

He squeezed his eyes shut and pictured the man he knew, the one who played with the Mymble on the swings on the Autocrat's birthday, the one who spit spirits into the fire, the one who slept everywhere on the Oshun Oxtra except in his bed, and he whispered the name of that man - _Joxterjoxterjoxterjoxter_ \- until the murderer became nothing but an apparition, an awful dream. 

He felt a distance from it. It felt normal to him, even. 

The Muddler trusted him completely. He couldn't imagine his claws around his neck, his hair in his fist - he shivered, and there was something like arousal in it, which upset the Muddler. This wasn't a game, it was other people's death, there was death in those two hands. 

He decided not to think about it anymore.

The important thing was after that they left the Muddler alone.

He spent a lot of time drawing in the ash and sand. 

"What's that?" the Joxter asked, around his pipe. He was smoking what was probably the last of his tobacco. The Muddler hoped for his sake he'd find more.

"Oh...I'm drawing you," said the Muddler, setting his stick aside. "I wish I had brought my paints...and some other things, too..."

He had made a portrait of the way he'd like to picture him, sitting and smoking, well on his way to a nap, not like the man he had seen with the blood on his hands and the wild joy on his face, and in moments like this it was so easy to believe that that version of the Joxter had been somebody else.

The Joxter came over to look. "It sure does look like me - at least, I think it does. I haven't been in front of a looking-glass in some time."

The Muddler smiled at him, a barefaced smile, one that hid nothing of all his love. "It's a shame. You're so handsome."

The Joxter laughed, a kind laugh - amused by how in love with him the Muddler was - and kissed him, lifting up his chin. "You're handsome too. You've got golden hair, and nice arms - in fact, I like you all over."

* * *

The Muddler was awake before everyone else was, half out of habit (his natural sleeping patterns just seemed to fall this way) and half because he had to make breakfast. He'd wake up the Joxter, who pretended to hate it, every morning before he slipped out to the mess tent. Sometimes he'd stroke his hair, whisper to him, watch him, and other times he'd feel adventurous and wake him up with his mouth, when he noticed he was hard in his sleep. He loved playing with his body. Usually that ended up in a drowsy kind of sex, though sometimes the Joxter would half-wake and seize him and pin him down and he'd barely be inside of him before he came. The Muddler didn't care about his own pleasure. He simply liked pleasing the Joxter, so thoroughly and quickly.

He loved the things the Joxter would say after. He held himself up so he could look down at him with a hunger in his eyes that had nothing to do with lust, and tell him, "God, you're perfect."

"How can you say that? I'm always - "

"No, you're perfect," the Joxter said, and cupped his face. The Muddler turned and kissed his hand. The Joxter lay on top of him, his weight comforting him, until the Muddler understood.

"I don't want you to hurt anyone," the Muddler whispered. 

"Please, I have to," the Joxter whispered back, and his voice was pained. "It's in me."

"I know. I want it not for other people, but for you." 

He wished he cared more about what happened to those other people, but he didn't.

The Joxter rested his head on the Muddler's chest and took in a few slow, deep breaths. 

"Don't change," the Muddler begged him. "I trust you so much."

"It will never be you," the Joxter told him. "No matter what you say or do, I will _never_ be the one to hurt you. I need you to believe me. Do you?"

The Muddler fought back tears. "I do."

None of them spoke after that, but they lay there until it was well past the time the Muddler had to get up and cook, and he reluctantly slid out from underneath him.

* * *

When the Muddler got to the mess tent it occurred to him that he better take stock of supplies, which he had done repeatedly over the past few days. They barely had anything left, no matter which way he counted everything up. The mumriks didn't ask for much, they were happy bringing back fish from the stream for the Muddler to fry or to salt and dry, or a doe to butcher, and some of them had raided someplace-or-another so they had flour and salt for hardtack. Most of what the Muddler did in the morning and evening was portion out everything so they wouldn't start to fight.

The fire had originally given them a bounty. The deer were driven out, in a stumbling confusion, and the gamebirds were active, looking for places to rebuild their ground nests. Eventually they had hunted down what they could, stripped what was left of the berries and edible plants, fished whatever hadn't been poisoned by the ash in the water, and realized that they had eaten most of what had survived. (The Joxter made an idle comment that it was unlike a mumrik to realize that he was devouring all of nature until it was too late. Their appetites had become insatiable, and their sense of the land was gone.)

The Muddler wondered if the enemy might have planned it that way, waited for them to eat themselves right off the land. In any case the territory was now useless to a mumrik, and they were packing up and leaving in search of a better piece of the earth to stake out. The Joxter was worried that the enemy - it was starting to drive the Muddler insane the way they only ever said "the enemy", this mysterious entity without a name or even goals - had had ample time to create all sorts of fortifications around them, and if they didn't pick the right way to go they might be walking into an ambush.

Forward scouts were sent in what, according to the instinct of whoever made such decisions, seemed like an auspicious direction. They had picked it at random, in case the enemy (the Enemy, the Muddler thought, bestowing it a capital letter in lieu of anything else) assumed they'd follow any sort of line of thinking at all and traveled, for instance, downstream, staying near the water source.

When the forward scouts didn't come back, a brief meeting was held at the bonfire. The Joxter came back looking pale.

"Stay close to me," he told him. "I'll carry most of our things so you can travel light. If something happens, run."

"Where are we going?" the Muddler asked.

"Straight into the ambush."

"You can't be serious! Why?"

"Because we know where the Enemy is now. We can push. We want to push." The Muddler thought of how a woman in childbirth has the urge to do the same.

"I thought the whole point of sending forward scouts - "

"I did too, but it's not like that. We have to go to them. I don't think anyone knew how much we had to until just now. No one's felt this in recent memory."

He cupped the Muddler's neck and pressed his forehead against his and stayed there. The Muddler closed his eyes, and focused on the Joxter, the beautiful, tender man in front of him, his lover, the killer, and he thought he had a taste of it, the blood in the Joxter's mouth.

"I understand," said the Muddler slowly.

"Keep the gun on you," the Joxter said.

* * *

_Lacking heaven, we will sing of hell._

* * *


	15. Chapter 15

There was an energy in the camp. The Muddler wanted to call it a nervous energy, but that was the wrong word for it. It was a hungry one. Moreover, it had a focus and direction. Narrow calm. It was simple and cold and devout.

The Muddler almost envied it.

The Joxter came back from the bonfire where they held their ritual meetings, where the Muddler somehow sensed he didn't belong. He ran up to him - he always ran there and back, as if he were afraid to leave him alone for too long. The Muddler appreciated the sentiment. 

Meanwhile, the bonfire burned, casting strange light on the Joxter's face. Smoke and shadow, and a red spark in his eyes.

"Follow the north star for eighteen kilometers," the Joxter said. "That's where we're meeting up if we all get separated. We expect to, so keep it in mind."

The Muddler didn't ask how he'd know eighteen kilometers had passed. He had the feeling it would come to him.

_"Keep the gun on you,"_ the Joxter said, for the second time.

They didn't bother to douse the bonfire. They seemed to figure that the Enemy was watching the smoke on the horizon, and they'd get a better chance at them if they kept it burning, didn't warn them they were leaving. The Muddler thought it seemed dangerous, but the land around them was already razed, black and crumbling. There was nothing left to burn.

Instead they kept their tents on their backs and their weapons at the ready. They advanced in no particular formation, but spread out well enough, each keeping their own. The Muddler tagged behind the Joxter, as close as he could get. He watched his back - his firm, straight back, quivering with tension. 

He knew, more than he had ever known before, that the Joxter could kill and be happy about it. 

He could too.

The thought made him sick.

Instead of retching in the bushes he must keep marching on, he thought - moving on, he corrected himself. He didn't want to march, didn't want to be a soldier. He was here for the Joxter alone.

He shut his eyes momentarily. _I'll kill for you,_ he thought. _I'll kill anyone who touches you. I'll do it again and again and again._

He tripped over a raised root, and the whole forest went still.

The Joxter held out his arm, stopping him dead.

_Please tell me I haven't done it again,_ the Muddler thought. _Please please please -_

And then they were on them. 

There were dozens of them. The Joxter held up his spear, but there were too many to fight alone. The Enemy must have been concentrating their whole force along this pathway, guessing this was the way they'd take - and they guessed right. The mumriks scattered, tearing the Enemy's army into pieces, leading them this way and that. The Joxter picked off a few as he ran, slammed his spear into the knee of an Enemy (and the Muddler saw his kneecap move horrendously) and then buried the point into his throat the moment he sank to the ground. The Muddler struggled to keep up, held his gun tight to his chest. He saw eyes flash towards him, saw them calculate in milliseconds. A man with a firearm wasn't worth it. Keep your head down. Go for the man with the hammer or the knife or the spear.

The Joxter wasn't watching him. Wasn't paying attention.

He didn't see it when someone came up behind the Muddler, yanked his collar, crushed his arm around the Muddler's waist before he could spin around to shoot him, and held him horribly to his body, his breath on his neck - and then the Muddler was on his knees, the Enemy knocking the gun out of his hands, and they tied his wrists behind his back - the Joxter was running, running, and the Muddler saw his back disappear in the nighttime darkness.

He couldn't cry out. They had him gagged.

Why they didn't kill him, he didn't know.

The last thing he felt was a blow against his head.

* * *

He came to in a puddle of his own saliva. His head was on a cool surface. Almost comforting, considering the pain on the side of his head. He tried to lift it up, vision blurry.

He was in a war tent. Much like the one the mumriks had, but this - it belonged to the Enemy. He knew it right away. There was something in the air about it, an insidious kind of feeling, as if the very nature of the oxygen he breathed was against him. It was also, the Muddler realized with a kind of horror, much better organized than the other mumriks'. It was a canvas tent, rather than the pelt ones, larger and more spacious, and they were at a metal desk - this was a semi-permanent encampment. They were here for the long haul. That meant they had a supply line, and a plan - all sorts of things - 

Someone was sitting across from him, gloved hands folded. He had been waiting patiently, the Muddler saw.

He felt dread rise in his throat.

The Muddler didn't bother to struggle. He felt his wrists bound to the chair he was sitting in. 

_Please tell me they didn't catch Joxter,_ he thought. Panic began in his chest, kickstarted his heartbeat, and he wanted so badly to ask about him, but he didn't want them to know there was something, someone, he cared about - 

He knew what was going to happen to him.

* * *

_Meanwhile, far away, the Joxter ran through the forest, alone._

_He knelt down on the ground, pushed away the fallen needles. The air was rank with the smell of evergreens. They had disturbed the whole grove with their battle._

_In the pines there lay a rifle..._

* * *

"You're a Muddler, aren't you?" said the man across from him softly. 

The Muddler couldn't get a grip on the man. The Enemy. He seemed older, though mumriks aged very slowly, and the Muddler couldn't quite tell. He had soft, sympathetic eyes. The kind that were dangerous in merciless situations.

"I'm a Muddler, it's true..." he murmured. He straightened up to meet his gaze. He felt he would get the worst of it if he didn't.

"What are you doing with a bunch of mumriks, then?" the man asked, with a bit of a chuckle.

Pain pierced the Muddler's heart. He didn't want to tell a stranger that he was in love.

Instead he said nothing.

"It doesn't matter," said the Enemy, looking at him with his odd green eyes. They shone with water. 

There were papers on the desk, the Muddler realized, all of a sudden, when the Enemy picked them up and stacked them with a sigh. "Why don't you tell me where they were going? Then we can untie you, go our separate ways...I don't want to keep you here any longer than I have to."

Eighteen kilometers towards the north star. The Muddler said nothing.

"Why don't I untie one of your hands?" the Enemy coaxed. Still, the Enemy got up, and the Muddler heard the _shick_ of a knife behind him. He gasped, tensed, but it was only the man cutting the rope. He freed his left hand. The Muddler worked it, feeling life come back into his numb fingers. He was, perversely, grateful.

The Enemy sat down across from him again. He took his forearm and brought it onto the table, then slid his hand down his arm, moving his thumb over his fingertips.

"You're a very handsome young man," he said quietly.

The Muddler froze.

"And very smart. I can tell."

The Enemy coldly, quickly, and cleanly pushed his finger back until it snapped. The Muddler screamed.

"...and I know you know that I can do that again whenever I want," said the Enemy, in his gentle voice. "Now tell me," he said, "where are the rest of you?"

The Muddler shook his head frantically. "I don't know anything, I don't know, I don't know," he begged. 

The Enemy ran his revolting thumb across another one of his fingers _(please please please anything but that I can't stand you touching me please just hurt me just hurt me just -_ ) before snapping the digit in half.

He sighed again, as if he thought it were a shame, and again the Muddler heard the sound of his knife. It was a slender little stiletto with a bone handle, the Muddler recognized, through a haze of pain. Strange the things you notice. A bone handle, a bone handle...

He touched the very tip to his gloved fingertip, as if testing the sharpness of the blade. He gave the Muddler, for the first time, an absolutely pitiless gaze.

Then he slammed the stiletto down on his hand, pinning it to the table.

He bent at the waist, as if bowing to a dance partner, and licked the blood off the wound.

_Joxter_ , the Muddler thought, _Joxter, Joxter_... He thought of the Joxter doing this to him, and he felt like a freak, but it helped him - that he was in bed with him, that this was a kink of his, that this pain was all sex, all a fantasy, and any moment now it would stop, he would hold him in his arms, he would be there with him, he would - 

The Enemy grabbed his small finger and pulled it, hard. The Muddler felt something rip, his joints come apart. 

_Eighteen kilometers towards the north star, eighteen kilometers towards the north star, Joxter, JOXTER -_

And then something ripped into the tent, a sword, a spear - 

\- and the Enemy's shouts were far away, coming closer, but the man with the gloved hands had a blade buried in his stomach and was coughing up viscera and blood, what was left of his internal organs, and the Muddler felt his bonds being cut, and he fell backwards into the Joxter's arms - 

"How much did you tell them?" the Joxter whispered, cradling his head to his shoulder.

"Nothing," murmured the Muddler. "I didn't tell them anything at all..." His voice was choked with tears. 

"Brave boy. My brave boy," said the Joxter, pressing a fierce kiss to his forehead. "I underestimated you." 


	16. Chapter 16

The Muddler hardly remembered what happened after that. All he knew was the Joxter carrying him to the tent for the wounded and sick, and stayed with him while they set his fingers and he screamed, and the Joxter insisted on lying with him while he slept in his cot that night, kneeling on the floor, his hand on his good hand, his head resting on the cold metal frame. The next day they gave the Muddler a "herbal tincture" which turned out to be straight morphine, and sent him back to where he lived with the Joxter. He spent a lot of time underneath the furs, and in general, trying to heal.

* * *

The Joxter was sleeping in a sunbeam, head propped up against a tree, and for a while he looked like the man he used to be. ("The war will be over, or else I'll be dead, and then the war will be over for me anyway - either way, I win. Might as well nap," he said.)

Let me feel the sun the way he does, thought the Muddler, and he reached out for the God-who-protects-all-small-beasts, but he couldn't feel Him. And so he stood there alone. 

He felt peaceful, all the same.

He smiled, and knelt down to touch the Joxter's hair. He did it with his bad hand, as he had begun to think of it, and the touch hurt him. But all the same.

"I love you," he whispered.

"Mmknowyoudo," the Joxter mumbled, and turned his face into his hand and kissed his palm. Then he went back to sleep.

The Muddler left to cook lunch.

* * *

They liked to stay up late sometimes, when they knew they could be absolutely alone. The Muddler sat with his knees pulled up to his chest, and the Joxter poked the bonfire with a stick. 

"I think you see the same things I see," said the Joxter. "And that you see it because I see it. Maybe not as clearly - well, that part doesn't half matter. It's still there."

"Yes," said the Muddler. "Though, I never told you about all that, did I?"

"You didn't have to."

He felt relieved to have some reasoning behind his strange impulses, his reverent states. It was all because he loved a man who felt it like he did.

"Take me someplace where I can be with you like that," the Muddler said.

The Joxter took his hand. His good hand.

"Come with me," he said.

They walked through the forest, or what had once been the forest, the ashes on the dirt, the blackened structures that used to call themselves trees, their jagged and dark forms mixing with the night sky. 

Eventually what had once been a forest opened into a stretch of sand. It was dirty sand, and rocky, with nothing there but patches of scrub brush, but it was a clearing in the ruined woods. The Muddler looked out on it. It was a pale color in the moonlight.

"See?" said the Joxter, softly. "It hasn't been burned."

They stood there holding hands. A silence had come over them.

The Joxter had his face turned to the sky, and so the Muddler did too. The stars were bright tonight.

"We learned a lot about the God-that-protects-all-small-beasts. He turned out to be wild, like we are," said the Joxter. "They burnt him right out of the ground. He passed from this world, and I don't know where he went, and he won't be here again."

"How are you so certain?"

"Oh, I'm not." The Joxter smiled at him. "I'm only talking nonsense."

The Muddler held his hand tight.

"Why are the men burning the forest?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know. It has nothing to do with us," said the Joxter. "Probably, they want farms. All sorts of creatures that were never meant to live together, and because they can't live like natural people, you have to manage their food and water and the runoff from their shit. And whole long rows of crops that were never meant to grow without other plants, so they have to put elements in the soil, spray for bugs, and who knows what else...A farm is the ugliest thing in the world." He stretched with one arm, and yawned. "But, who cares. They can be peaceful too. I myself, I can just live in a tree, and eat off the tree, and if it doesn't blossom I'll move on to another one. See?"

The Muddler watched the stars. There was a flash of a meteorite. He blinked.

"I don't notice the night sky very often," he confessed.

"From now on I'll remind you to look."

They were quiet for a while, standing there holding hands and watching the night sky.

"They say that hell is fire and brimstone," said the Joxter suddenly, "but other people say that hell is a void without God. You chose to live without God's light, and so you're sent to a place where you don't have to. I think today we get the best of both."

"I think you're right," said the Muddler.

The Joxter laughed. "Well, I'll tell you when I get to hell," he said.

"Why do you think you'll go to hell?" asked the Muddler, surprised.

The Joxter idly kicked a rock. "Why wouldn't I?"

He turned, and the Muddler turned with him. "Come on," said the Joxter. "Let's go back. I'm tired, and honestly a little bored."

* * *

The Joxter went back to struggling with the mumriks after that. The Muddler found that he liked to watch him, shirtless, clawing at other men with a viciousness that both petrified and thrilled him. 

_It's all for me,_ he'd think. _He'd never hurt me. I have that._

They were searching for something. The Muddler understood.

* * *

They went back to the sand fields only once, and that was to make love. At first the Muddler thought they were doing something wrong, desecrating someplace holy, but then he realized, his tail wrapped around the Joxter's waist and his nails digging into his back, and they were doing something holy too. After he came he felt a sense of peace. And the Joxter lay on top of him afterwards, as always.

* * *

_In our solitude, in our solitude we do this. The things we do because God has abandoned us are also a form of prayer._

* * *

After that the nightmares set in.


	17. Chapter 17

It's okay, whispered the Joxter, it's okay.

The Muddler fought the ropes anyway. It felt horrifying, and it felt good, all at once. He was dangling from a tree before the Joxter, his wrists tied, his shirt riding up, and he'd never be free of him, not until the Joxter wanted him to be. 

The Joxter had a knife in his hand. A stiletto. He moved the tip over the curve of the Muddler's stomach. He felt it cold and hard against him.

"No," he begged, "No."

"You're hard," whispered the Joxter. He pushed the tip in just a little, just above his crotch. Blood slid down the knife.

"Don't," he said, his arousal surging, "Please don't."

The Joxter smiled up at him tenderly.

Then he plunged the blade into his stomach, and the Muddler woke up in a cold sweat.

"Joxter?" he whispered, shaking his shoulder. "Joxter! Wake up!"

"Hmm...?" His eyes blinked open (most of the way) and he looked at him in a sleepy, gentle way that made the Muddler feel safe.

"I had a bad dream."

The Joxter put his arms around him, pressed his face to the Muddler's chest, and sighed. "I'm sorry. Was it me again?"

The Muddler felt like lying, but he wasn't sure what to say. Instead he played with the Joxter's hair and stared up at the tentpole.

"It's not about you, or who you are to me..."

"I understand. It's all right."

The sun was up again already, and it was shining through the crack in the tent flap (though in a way that didn't quite penetrate the darkness inside). They had missed the narrow window of the night. 

"I'm sorry we haven't been together in a while," the Muddler said, dropping his voice to a whisper. It was easier to talk about these things under your breath by daylight.

"If you don't think we can do it again, I don't mind." He yawned. "I'm an old man anyway. At the end of the day, it's a lot of work..."

The Muddler felt awful. "We'll see."

"Just don't do anything unless you feel like it."

Somehow that made the Muddler smile. "That's what you think about everything."

"And look how relaxed I am all the time. I must be doing something right."

He rubbed his leg idly against the Muddler's. "Don't worry about me. I've lived well long enough that I've started to think nothing will ever touch me. Of course, as soon as you start thinking that way, that's when They get you."

"...Who is They?"

"You know," said the Joxter indifferently. "Them."

The Muddler groaned. "Now you're just scaring me on purpose."

"...Maybe a little."

The Muddler hit him with a pillow.

"But it cheered you up, didn't it?"

" _Maybe a little_."

* * *

Meanwhile the mumriks tore the land, both the Enemy and themselves, burning what was sunburnt, killing what was alive, and making ashes out of all the land they couldn't have.

Eventually they hit the sea.

"We'll have to go along the coast after this," said the Joxter, standing on a high rock with the Muddler, surveying what they had done. He held his hat to his head to keep it from being blown off by the wind. "The waters are dangerous. They're deeper and older, and they know more. I wonder what's going to come join our little war? Ghosts and sea-wolves, at best."

They could see a significant part of the ocean from this spot, and watched as the bloody slurry from a broken pipeline poured down a ledge into the waves. It dislodged rocks along its way, more and more of them, until a whole sheaf of the cliffside fell off into the ocean with a cataclysmic sound.

Everything was silent. The ocean purred and foamed, and swallowed it up as if it were never there. The mumriks beneath them barely watched.

For some reason the Joxter laughed.

"Don't," said the Muddler quietly.

He turned away and kept laughing, walking through the sandy brush and down the path that led to the beach.

Beneath them the mumriks were singing again. Somewhere in the distance a dog was barking.

_Dear God, won't you lend me an iron forge,_

_an iron forge to remake my birds,_

_to remake my birds so they can roost,_

_to remake my fields that burnt in war,_

_to remake my sons who died in battle_

_so that nothing will touch them,_

_so that nothing will touch them ever again?_

That night the Joxter took his face in his hands and said, "No one touches you. No one touches you ever again. Do you understand?"


	18. Chapter 18

Finally, it rained.

It was late at night, and they were awake again, using the small space in time they had carved out for themselves. When he heard it start (all of a sudden it came down in sheets) the Joxter went out of the tent he had set up at the very place where the forest met the sand and went out into the woods in bare feet. The Muddler trailed after him.

"The earth is warm tonight," he said. "Not because of the fire, it's gone out already. Just because it is."

He stood there soaking wet, facing away from him, staring into the forest. The Muddler kept his eyes on his back, lit by the mumrik campfires. The fires guttered and shook, and so did the shadows on the Joxter. 

He didn't like it anymore when the Joxter did things he couldn't understand. He couldn't even tolerate sudden movements.

Of course, he did understand this. He had felt it once long ago. Red flowers and the wind on top of the roof. It was just it scared him now.

"Can we go inside now?" he asked softly.

"You can," said the Joxter, who hadn't picked up on any of this.

"I want you to come in too." He felt a little thrum of anxiety start trembling in his chest.

The Joxter stood still for a long moment, then turned away from the forest and walked back with him. He stripped down the second he came back into the tent and crawled under the furs and, after a moment's hesitation, so did the Muddler. The Joxter took him in his arms. His skin was cold.

"If I die I want you to go back to Moominvalley," the Joxter said. "You shouldn't be living alone."

The Muddler raised his head. "You're not going to die. Don't be stupid. Do you want to upset me?'

"No. I'm just telling you what it is I want."

The Muddler pulled away from him, rolled onto his back, and sighed impatiently. 

"What else? Do you want me to say something to your son? Sell your pipe?"

"I don't really care about any of that."

"I didn't think you would."

The Joxter propped his head up in his hands. His eyes were glinting in the thin red strip of campfire light that came through the tent flaps.

"Come on, don't be like that...What do you want me to do if you're the one who dies? Do you want - "

The Muddler grabbed him by the wrists and pinned him down.

The Joxter lay there, not resisting, staring up at him in surprise. His lips were slightly parted.

The Muddler kissed him. He kissed him as if it could protect the both of them, he kissed him as if in anger but it was anything but. 

Slowly, the Joxter opened his legs and moved them around his waist.

Soon the Muddler was in him, and the Joxter tilted his head back, a peaceful look on his face, breathing softly even as the Muddler fucked him with all the force in his body. He made such sweet sounds.

"...Honey..." he whispered, just once.

The Muddler finished on his chest. He hadn't come that hard in a long time. Some of it landed on the Joxter's face. He smiled a lazy smile and wiped it off with the back of his hand.

The Muddler sat back, panting.

"Feel better now?" the Joxter asked.

Nod.

* * *

The worst thing about setting up camp by the ocean is that when the Enemy came, there was nowhere to hide. The Muddler had to fight. 

He panicked every time one of them came at him, and his hand had barely healed, but he was bigger than the mumriks and had a natural advantage. When they were on him he managed to throw them off, and he felt sick every time one of them was on the ground or close to it and he rammed his spear through their throat. But it had to be done. He had to go home to the Joxter.

One morning he woke up and something had changed, he could sense it. Sea birds - the beach had so far been utterly silent - had come back.

The Muddler dressed and left the tent. The Joxter was already up and off somewhere. It was impossible to tell when he'd wake up.

He saw a series of ships landed on the shore. Seagulls had ridden them from God knows where, but they were each taking long looks at the land and then dispersing, disappearing over the horizon, some flying and some bobbing small in the rough sea until they were far away from the beach. Still, they had been a comfort to him while they lasted.

He caught sight of the Joxter.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"We're repurposing a few ships. Guess what's a military hospital," he said, and gave him his widest grin.

"It can't be," said the Muddler. He shaded his eyes against the harsh way the sun shines on flat land and squinted.

The Oshun Oxtra was at the far side of the beach.

So was Hodgkins.

"Uncle!" the Muddled cried, and ran into his arms.

"Oof," said Hodgkins. "There, there. Still awfully excitable, I see. How is the Joxter?"

"Same as usual. Gosh, it's nice to see you here." (But then the Muddler began worrying about whether or not he'd be safe.)

"How's military life suiting you?" He turned his head towards the burnt forest and got a funny look in his eyes. He wrinkled his brow. "Oh, don't answer. It looks like it's hell out there."

"Yeah, it kinda is..." said the Muddler, in a quiet voice.

The wind blew, scattering black onto the sand. It had been picking up as of late, and all the detritus was blowing into an angry sea.

"I have a surprise for you," said Hodgkins. "Bring the Joxter, will you?"

The Joxter, who had seen something he liked and was wandering away, turned on his heel and started to follow.

They got up on deck with some difficulty. The seas were rough - had been getting rougher since the war landed on the shore - and the plank up to the ship shook. Hodgkins marched them to the Joxter's old bedroom.

"I have the only key," he said, handing it to Muddler. "The room is yours whenever you want it." 

It felt heavy in his hands. The Muddler turned it over, looking at its dull shine. A fine key, a little oversized, the way he liked them.

The two of them went inside, and Hodgkins made a show of excusing himself. 

Joxter jumped back on the bed and nearly bounced off. The Muddler sat down on the end. Aside from occassional footsteps from outside, it was peaceful.

"Well, here we are," he said. "Back to where it all began."

The Muddler smiled to himself, looked around at the fading walls. They needed a new coat of paint. When this was all over he'd ask Uncle if he could do it himself. "I fell in love with you on this ship," he said.

"Mmhm," said the Joxter, sounding sleepy and peaceful and happy.

The Muddler lay next to him and hooked his small finger through his own. "Let's talk," he said.

"What about?"

"Oh, anything."

"How were your paintings coming along before we left?"

"I started working on them again after you came home - I mean, after you came to live with me," the Muddler said.

"After I came home," said the Joxter, gently. "Did you finish any?"

"Not yet. I had a few commissions I had to get done, though. I hope they understand that I had to leave them, with the war and all."

"Oh, is that how you were feeding us?" the Joxter said, with a yawn.

The Muddler laughed. "It didn't even occur to you to ask."

"What were they of?"

"A portrait from some photographs, and somebody wanted a landscape even though I'm not as good with landscapes. It was hard. I wonder what happened to the place I was painting. I hope I don't have to finish it from memory."

"You'll do fine," said the Joxter. His voice was comfortable and drowsy and, as always, it put the Muddler at ease.

From the other room (maybe Moominpappa's cabin) there was a low conversation and then a scream that scared the Muddler to the core. His head snapped towards the wall. The Joxter looked as if it didn't bother him much.

"They must be doing surgery on someone," he said. "Or ripping out the head of an arrow or something, at least. It's a hospital ship, like I said. And we don't have any anesthetic, just morphine." He ran his hand through his hair. "We're all just playing war, you know. No supply lines, no real hospital. Just us with our hands and teeth." 

He added: "We're not prepared."

The Muddler wasn't sure what they weren't prepared for, exactly.

In the other room the mumrik was still screaming.

The Joxter sat up. "All that carrying on...I'm going back to the tent to sleep."

The Muddler locked the door behind them.

* * *

_In his dreams that night the Joxter told him this: the sea is cleverer than God._

* * *


	19. Chapter 19

So it went. They traveled along the coast for the next few days, destroying. The ships and boats (some of the mumriks had dugout canoes they got from somewhere, and paddled in the wakes of the ships like dolphins) went before them, and the Oshun Oxtra, which wasn't nearly as fast as the others, always trailed behind. It wasn't meant for war.

"The nights are getting longer," said the Joxter one day, as most all of them were sitting around the huge cast-iron cauldron the Muddler cooked in (one of the only things they bothered taking campsite to campsite), eating for the evening. He rarely spoke to the Muddler in the company of others, he sensed that exposing part of his inner life to people he didn't trust made the Muddler nervous.

"Well, that's what happens after the solstice," said the Muddler in a careful voice.

"They're getting too long too quickly," said the Joxter.

"That's not possible...Is it?"

"Well, maybe it's a blessing...and maybe it's my imaginaaation," he sang, in a rather ghoulish sort of way that suggested that he thought otherwise.

Nights were theirs. Maybe it _was_ a blessing. Or maybe it was an illusion caused by the smoke.

They gathered seashells together when they had nothing better to do. The Muddler showed the best ones to the Joxter and told him where they came from and how they lived when they were alive. He had had a book about seashell collecting once, or rather, the Fuzzy had.

"I like this one," said the Joxter, holding a pale orange one up to the light. The sun shone right through it. 

"It's a jingle shell," said the Muddler. "There's a natural hole in them so you can make necklaces...and they make sounds when you're wearing them and they clatter all together...but I always broke all of mine. They're so thin, you see?"

"But they're everywhere," said the Joxter. "So whenever you want to look at one you can just go back to the shore. It's almost like they're yours."

"Almost," said the Muddler. He had a huge handful of shells, and brought it all back to the tent. They weren't spending a lot of time in the Oshun Oxtra. It had become a place of suffering. Still, he cherished those last few moments they had spent in there, together.

The next day they all packed up and went aboard the boats and ships. Someone had spotted the Enemy, coming from a long way off. The air had nothing of the haze that sometimes sprung up by the shoreline, and you could see for miles. 

It would take a long time for them to get there. Everyone onboard all of the ships was completely silent. The Joxter and the Muddler were on the Oshun Oxtra, in their room. 

Then all in a flash the Joxter leapt up and open the door. "Follow me!" 

"What? Joxter, no, they're coming! I don't want to be out there!" 

The Joxter whirled around and took his hands. "Do you trust me?"

"Of course I trust you."

"Then please don't say anything and let's _run_."

No one stopped them as they blew out the door and to the taffrail.

"You're going to have to jump," said the Joxter. 

"I - "

"You've jumped off once before and you can do it again."

He went first.

The Muddler didn't even think about it, just climbed up the rail and leapt. He wouldn't leave the Joxter alone. He hit the water cloudy and cold, all mixed up and silty from the ship's engines. He gasped as the freezing ocean hit him and salt filled his mouth.

The Joxter made it to shore first and waited, looking desperately back and forth. He grabbed the Muddler's hand as he staggered out of the water and pulled him into the unsullied forest. (They hadn't had time to ruin it yet.)

"Get down," the Joxter whispered, lowering himself into a bed of ferns. The Muddler followed suit.

The ships had headed father out to sea to meet each other. The Muddler could barely make them out - there!

They were upon each other now. The Muddler waited for a cannon, a gun, but there was nothing. None of the ships were armed. Instead, in almost total silence, besides the occasional shout as the soldiers maneuvered, the ships rammed each other, turning slow in the water to hit again. The mumriks in canoes hacked at the sides with axes and shovels, and the few people with shotguns or rifles tried to pick them off. 

The sea was louder than any of it.

A storm blew up, turned the sky as black as a century of war. The canoes all overturned, and the Muddler watched the mumriks struggle to make it to shore. Try, fail. Their heads disappearing under the waves, then coming up, then disappearing again and nothing happening after, nothing happening to them ever again.

They jettisoned the sinking ships and a few did make it, floating on torn pieces of hull or just out of their own luck and strength, and the Muddler saw them tear into each other as soon as the sea was shallow enough for their feet to find purchase. Whoever was left retreated into the forest, and their Enemies followed, and the Joxter put his hand on the Muddler's back and kept him breathing slow and low to the ground.

All of the ships had sank, and soon, it sounded as if every last mumrik had died.

There was silence in the pristine woods. The earth, at last, had corrected itself.

After a while the Joxter stood up. "I think it's over," he said, taking the Muddler's hand. "I think it's finally - "

And a thrown spear shot out of nowhere, went through the Joxter's body, and pinned him to a tree.

Then it really was over. There was the sound of retreating footsteps, and then nothing.

The Joxter looked up at the Muddler with desperate eyes. He pawed at his shirt, struggling to reach the spear, spitting out his own blood, and he just barely managed to make the words out:

_Look at the stars. Look at the stars._

"Joxter, honey, please, don't talk. Don't talk. We're going to get you out of here," and the Muddler cupped his face in his hands and the Joxter's face was already going so cold and then he just whispered "I want to see my son" and then his eyes went blank and still. As if he could see something the Muddler couldn't. And then he died.

* * *

The Muddler stayed for a long time with his body, kneeling on the ground, his hand still in the Joxter's stiffening claw, and then suddenly he realized that it was strange and cold and mottled blood was starting to pool in his fingers and he yanked his hand away. He didn't look at the Joxter's face, didn't look at his body (he had tried to pull the spear out so he could bury him but he didn't have the strength, and he knew he couldn't have managed to pour fistfuls of dirt on him either), and he scurried away like a rat. He went as far as he could with his hands on the back of his neck like he expected something to hit him and then he collapsed panting and sobbing underneath a rock somewhere. He fell asleep like that.

The next morning he couldn't figure out what else to do (there had to be something - but there wasn't) so he started in on the long slow walk to Moominvalley.

* * *

He didn't want to be the one to tell everyone, so he quietly told Moominpappa and asked him to tell everyone else and Moominpappa did.

As soon as Moominmamma found out she went upstairs, embraced him, and said, "Don't be afraid."

* * *

He stayed a couple of nights in the room he had shared with the Joxter, but the bed felt empty of him and then the Muddler realized that every bed would always feel empty of the Joxter. But he still couldn't take it and so he moved into the tent with Snufkin. 

One night Snufkin came back late, the fire was low and the Muddler was already lying in his bedroll. When he climbed in he had a strange look on his face, as if he had been thinking about something for a long time. He was just about to come to a decision.

"...Snufkin?" the Muddler asked, sitting up.

Snufkin dropped onto the Muddler's lap, straddling him, and threw his hat aside and pulled his shirt up over his head. Involuntarily, the Muddler felt the blood in his body shift. 

"I look just like my father, don't I?"

It was almost the same. In the dim light. Snufkin's body was different in increments, and his face wasn't quite the same, but yes. Yes. 

"I want this," Snufkin said. "I want to be where he's been."

He didn't wait for the Muddler to say anything, to react, just got him ready and slid down on top of him, making a low sound, and he rode him, and he sounded nothing like the Joxter in bed. The Muddler reached up and clapped a hand over his mouth, and Snufkin made a surprised sound, then got the picture, breathing hard and hot against his fingers, choking back his moans. 

The Muddler came first, suddenly and shamefully, and when Snufkin felt it inside of him he came too, and slid off of him, gasping and sobbing "Dad. Dad..."

He huddled up on the ground and the Muddler felt ashamed of what he had done. He tried to touch Snufkin's shoulder, but Snufkin pulled back.

The next day Snufkin left Moominvalley. He left a letter for Moomintroll, but the Muddler didn't ask what was in it. After half a week's time the Muddler went back to his house. He had left a window partially open and the summer rain had taken a rotted bite out of the windowsill.

He stared at it.

He'd have to replace it.

Life had to go on.

It was the last thing he wanted. It truly was.

* * *

The Fuzzy and Sniff came to take care of him. Within a year they remarried. They had a second son.

He dreamt of the Joxter and his wife knew he dreamt of the Joxter, and she understood. Perhaps that was why he married her.

He painted seldom for a while, and then frequently, and he raised his second son better, admittedly, than he had raised Sniff.

He looked at the stars. When he remembered. And he did remember, sometimes. 

The Muddler grew old. He grew old without the Joxter, he thought one day, and the thought hit him stiff and sharp while he was standing in his parlor wiping down the side table, catching a glimpse of himself in the polish. It happened like that. His suffering, his mourning. In little fragments scattered across the expanse of his life.

It would never go away. Truth be told, he didn't want it to. He was comfortable in his grief. It reminded him that he was still in love.

Sometimes, at night, he sobbed. It was important that he did. It felt important.

One day, as the sun was about to finish setting, the Muddler found that he couldn't really get up from his rocking chair on the porch. He was just too tired. Fine, he thought, he'd sleep out here, for an hour or two, and then go inside. 

As darkness slid over him, he dreamt. 

He was on a high field, surrounded by trees, and in the distance he could see the water. Everything he loved, everything the Joxter loved, was there. Birds in the branches, birds in the grass. And the scent of the pines. And the ocean. Somewhere - he just knew it - by the shore and by the rocks there would be a warm lagoon.

There was a figure surmounting the hill, and the Muddler knew who it was before he saw him clearly. 

"Joxter!" he cried, and ran to him, and their eyes met before their arms did, and they were holding each other in a tight embrace.

"I missed you so much," he told him.

The Joxter smiled.

Then he took the Muddler's hand and told him, "Come on! I have so many things to show you!" 


End file.
